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Producing the legal directories submissions can involve a huge amount of work, so it makes sense to reuse the material you’ve collected as much as possible to get the maximum return on your efforts. Lots of this may seem obvious – but you’d be surprised how many firms treat directories submissions as a one off, onerous task without linking them to other marketing or business development materials.

Pitches and capability statements: this may be an obvious one, but it bears repeating. A decent submission should be put together so it sells your firm – from the overview, to the cases, to the biographies (where included). This makes the information ideal for those times when you are actually selling your firm. Making sure that anyone who produces pitches or capability statements has access to the latest submissions can save valuable time when pulling a pitch together, rather than starting from scratch.

Updating your website: lawyers seem to fall into two distinct camps when it comes to their online profiles; either super keen and always on top of them, or those who barely acknowledge their existence, and have to be prompted to keep them even remotely up to date. Again, once you have collected all the material for the submissions, it can be useful to use this as a basis for updating case highlights on lawyer and practice area pages (with the appropriate permissions, of course – a client may be happy to have their case included in a submission but not want to see it on a website!) You can also encourage lawyers to add information such as publications and awards to personal profiles both on the firm website and on external business profiles, such as LinkedIn.

Reusing for other directories: many people already use (basically) the same material for Legal 500 and Chambers, but with a little editing you should be able to also use this for other directories, such as IFLR – maximising your directories presence. (Though remember, if you’re sending the same clients to more than one directory, permission should be sought each time, and you need to beware of ‘directories fatigue’).

Prompts for articles and publications: if your market overview is talking about the key things affecting the market or major cases you’ve been involved in, can you expand on any of these in the form of a newsletter, article or blog post? The submission can be a useful ‘jumping off’ point for ideas.

This is a version of an article available as part of the Defero Law Legal Directory Tune-Up. If you have any questions about the directories process or need assistance, contact me at traceysinclair23@gmail.com