Do Law Firm Rankings and Awards Matter?

Whilst it’s always nice to be recognised for your hard work, it’s important to understand why you’re pursuing a certain award or status. We can work with our clients to draft prestigious award submissions, but are their resources better spent elsewhere? 

Awards and trust icons look great on your website; they instantly tell the visitor that you are a leader in your field. But do law firm clients ever go on to look at the Legal 500? Does having a large trophy cabinet equate to large profits? Do website trust icons for awards actually induce your customers to trust you more? We think, like the answer to most vexing legal questions, that it depends.

What are your goals?

Law firm rankings and awards are an excellent tool for recruiting and retaining the best people to work for your firm, but not necessarily for gaining more clients. Awards and rankings boost morale in your firm and can also give greater confidence to your current clients. In turn, these goals help to build your firm’s brand. If you wish to use awards and rankings to boost the visibility and brand of your firm, understanding your goals is greatly important.

One of the first things we like to learn from our clients is what they are looking to achieve.  This varies greatly from winning more business online to becoming recognised as an industry leader in their field. This process is important as it allows us to put together a comprehensive strategy for meeting these aims.

ROI on submissions is difficult to measure and thus, it is important to be strategic about which awards and rankings you apply for and before you apply, think about how they will impact on your business. Here are just some of the things you should think about when assessing whether to invest time and money in a submission –

1.    What are the aims of our firm and our fee earners?

2.    Are there a better means of achieving these aims?

3.    Is there a likelihood of achieving the recognition?

4.    How will this recognition really affect the firm as a whole?

5.    Has this recognition been brought to your attention by clients or potential clients?

Answering these questions will help you establish which awards and rankings submissions will be most beneficial to your firm, and even determine whether it is worth the time and investment at all.

Resourcing Submissions

Drafting submissions is a costly and time-consuming business. The number of awards and rankings available to law firms is vast. This means it can be very time consuming to draft awards and rankings submission, especially if you want them to be good enough to win.

Creating a budget for submissions and sticking to it is important, as is gaining the support of partners in your firm. Many firms have an individual or even a team responsible for submissions or for liaising with the marketing department to create submissions. However, it may be beneficial to outsource submissions to a specialist marketing agency in order both to relieve the pressure of drafting the submission from your team and to have your submissions drafted more efficiently. Although the issue with outsourcing the drafting of submissions is that, once again, it can be difficult to measure the ROI, making it difficult to justify such a spend, especially if you are part of a small or mid-sized firm.

What we can take away from this assessment it that whilst awards and rankings can be a great tool for increasing the prestige of your brand amongst current potential employees, visitors to your site and long-term clients, they might not be the best means of winning new business. For certain types of law firms, the time and money spent on awards and rankings submission may be better spent on high-quality content, search engine optimisation, media placement and tracking the results of these methods.

Here at Curated Media, we specialise in helping you meet your goals through strategic content marketing. We provide a bespoke service that ensures your business receives the tailored marketing strategy required to meet your aims.