In-house lawyers searching for legal advice in unfamiliar jurisdictions can now benefit from an important new resource – performance reviews of law firms, written by other corporate counsel.
The new service from Martindale-Hubbell, known as Client Review, was launched in late 2007, and already has a number of firms enrolled. Client Review builds on the success of the Peer Review programme in the US, and represents a significant milestone in the transformation of Martindale-Hubbell service.
“Client Review is one of a number of enhancements being made to martindale.com, with the needs of sophisticated legal service buyers in mind,” said James Harley, International Marketing Director at LexisNexis Martindale-Hubbell. “Client Review reinforces our trusted role of providing buyers of legal services with the information they need to make informed external counsel hiring decisions.”
Client Review is very different from traditional “law firm rankings” offered by rival legal directories. These directories typically produce hierarchical rankings of law firms, based in part on feedback from competitor practices. By contrast, Client Review only asks for “yes/no” recommendations from the people who really matter – a law firm’s own clients. By aggregating feedback from multiple clients on an anonymous basis, it is possible to produce a full and frank analysis of a firm’s overall performance. In contrast with the third party recommendations provided by traditional directories, the “value-added” content provided through the Client Review process speaks for itself.
For in-house lawyers, feedback from their own peer group is vital. In-depth consultation and market research carried out by Martindale-Hubbell confirmed the crucial importance of personal recommendations when corporate counsel are deciding on their external service providers – especially when an external advisor is being sought in a remote jurisdiction. Client Review offers in-house counsel and other buyers of overseas legal services two crucial benefits. Firstly, it provides them with anonymous, client-sourced feedback and recommendations. This helps the buyer build a shortlist of candidate firms, when no personal recommendation is forthcoming. Secondly, it is a reliable reference tool with which to validate a referral from another third party – especially when the buyer is not entirely confident in the quality of the source.
In addition to providing an innovative referral services, Client Review also gives in-house lawyers the opportunity to provide feedback on their own law firms’ performance – whether they ask for it or not. To this end, Martindale-Hubbell is actively encouraging in-house counsel to submit an appraisal of their own external legal advisors.
The entire process is handled by Martindale-Hubbell, and all feedback provided by counsel for their law firm advisors is anonymous. In addition, before any feedback is provided to law firms, counsel’s feedback will be aggregated together with responses from at least two other companies. Once they receive their performance review, the firms have two options: they can either use this feedback as an internal resource – perhaps to review the performance of specific departments. Alternatively, they can publish the entire survey results on their own Martindale.com firm profile. However, firms are not allowed to selectively publish favourable comments on their Martindale.com profile.
One of the principal benefits of the Client Review service is that it allows in-house counsel to avoid the embarrassment and inconvenience traditionally associated with law firm appraisals. Unlike lengthy client satisfaction meetings, or telephone surveys conducted by third parties, the Client Review feedback process is extremely quick – typically lasting no more than a few minutes. All appraisals are carried out by counsel via an online questionnaire, at a time of their choosing. The survey asks counsel to state whether or not they would recommend the firm for its client service, quality of legal representation and value for money. Counsels are also invited to recommend the firm by practice area, geography, and industry sector. As the scheme becomes more established, it is Martindale’s ultimate intention to assess the performance of individual lawyers.
The decision to ask whether counsel would recommend a firm, rather than rate them on a sliding system, is deliberate. It was generally felt that rankings tended to result in statistics that were largely meaningless, whereas in reality a simple “yes/no” recommendation was more helpful. However, the Client Review system also allows counsel to add additional “narrative” comments about the firm, if they wish – although this is not compulsory.
To date, early feedback from Client Review has been overwhelmingly positive, both from in-house and private practice lawyers. Even private practice lawyers working in more traditionally minded jurisdictions have welcomed the development as a genuine alternative to traditional rankings tables, while in-house counsel appreciate the product’s inherent simplicity. With a substantial number of leading law firms already participating, one thing is now certain – in-house counsels can now select their external legal advisers using the opinions of their peers, rather than those of other law firms.
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