Law firms put a tremendous amount of work into league table submissions and rankings. Deals are tracked, data is collected and checked, submissions go through multiple rounds of review and marketing and business development teams spend a lot of time making sure the firm gets credit for the work it has done. Then the rankings come out and much of the attention shifts to promoting the result.
Of course a strong ranking should be promoted on the firm’s website, in pitches and proposals, in lawyer bios and practice materials and on social media. But there’s a much bigger business development opportunity in the information behind the ranking. League table data can tell you a lot about your clients, prospects, competitors and the markets in which your firm is operating, including where the firm has momentum, where an important client may be sending work elsewhere and which organizations are particularly active in areas the firm wants to grow.
Whether you’re looking at LSEG, Bloomberg, Mergermarket, PitchBook or another league table provider, spend time analyzing what contributed to the ranking and connecting that information with your internal client, matter, CRM and relationship data. That analysis can lead to much more specific client development conversations, stronger prospect lists, better pitches, useful competitive intelligence and new ideas for content, events and PR.
Look at What’s Actually Driving the Ranking
Start with the matters that contributed to the firm’s position and look for patterns across the work. Which clients generated the most activity? Which lawyers and offices were involved? Which industries were represented? What kinds of transactions were they? What were the deal sizes? Are particular geographies, subsectors or types of work appearing frequently?
A strong private equity ranking, for example, may be driven in part by significant healthcare activity, middle-market transactions or add-on acquisitions. One group of lawyers may have developed considerable experience in a subsector that hasn’t received much marketing attention, or a particular office may be generating more activity than anyone realized. Looking at the ranking this way can help practice and industry leaders understand where the firm has momentum and where additional business development, content, events, PR or other investments may make sense.
Use the Data to Learn More About Your Clients
I’d spend just as much time looking at the clients behind the ranking as the ranking itself. If a client completed six relevant transactions during the period and your firm handled one, look at what happened with the other five. There may be perfectly good reasons why another firm handled them, including geography, conflicts, existing relationships or capabilities your firm doesn’t have. There may also be work your firm could have handled and simply wasn’t considered for.
This gives client teams something concrete to discuss. Instead of having a broad conversation about expanding the relationship or cross-selling, look at the client’s actual activity. Which firms handled the other matters? Which practices were involved? Who appears to be making the decisions? Where does your firm already have strong relationships and where are the gaps? Those questions can lead to a much more useful client development plan because they’re based on what the client is actually doing.
Build Better Prospect Lists
League table data can also help identify organizations that are actively buying the kinds of legal services your firm provides. For a private equity practice, that might mean looking at sponsors that consistently appear in the data, emerging managers that are becoming more active or investors doing significant work in industries where the firm already has strong experience.
Compare those organizations with your own relationship information before adding them to a prospect list. Look for lawyers who know their general counsel, investment professionals, operating partners or portfolio company executives. Find out whether your lawyers have worked across from them on transactions, whether another practice has represented one of their portfolio companies, whether there are alumni connections or whether someone at the firm knows one of their bankers or other advisors.
A prospect list built this way is grounded in actual market activity and existing relationships. It also gives lawyers much more information about why a particular organization is worth pursuing and where the most realistic path into the relationship may be.
Find the White Space in Existing Relationships
The same analysis can show where your firm has only part of a client relationship. If you regularly handle a client’s M&A work, look at who handles the financing, tax, antitrust, employment, executive compensation, regulatory, IP and other matters connected with those transactions. If another firm repeatedly appears in one of those areas, understand why and whether your firm has a credible opportunity to become involved.
The analysis works in the other direction as well. Your firm may have a strong regulatory, employment, litigation or finance relationship with a company that is highly active in transactions but consistently uses another firm for its deal work. Combining external market information with internal matter and relationship data can help identify specific areas worth discussing with the client and the lawyers responsible for the relationship.
This makes cross-practice business development much more practical. Instead of telling lawyers they should introduce more colleagues or sell more services, you can show them where the client is buying work, who is currently getting it and whether there is a realistic reason for the firm to compete for it.
Give Lawyers Better Reasons to Reach Out
Lawyers frequently tell me they want to stay in touch with clients and prospects but aren’t sure what to say. A league table announcement on its own probably isn’t going to generate much of a conversation, but the experience and market activity behind the ranking can provide plenty of reasons to reach out.
If the firm is seeing more add-on activity, changes in financing structures, increased transaction volume in a particular industry or other shifts across its matters, those observations can become the basis for a useful conversation. A lawyer can ask a client whether they’re seeing the same thing, share what the firm has been observing or discuss how a particular development may affect the client’s plans.
The ranking supports the conversation because it shows that the firm is actively working in the market, while the outreach focuses on something relevant to the person receiving it. That’s a much stronger reason to contact someone than sending an email whose primary message is that the firm received an accolade.
Turn the Data Into Better Content
Most firms create content around the ranking itself, but the underlying activity can support much more interesting thought leadership. Look at the patterns in the firm’s work and then talk to the lawyers who are closest to those matters about what they’re seeing.
If healthcare deal activity has increased significantly, ask what is driving it and what clients should understand about the change. If add-on acquisitions account for a growing portion of the firm’s volume, explore what lawyers are seeing across those transactions. If financing conditions are affecting deal structures, bring finance and M&A lawyers together to discuss the issue from their different perspectives.
Those conversations can become articles, LinkedIn posts, webinars, videos, podcasts, client roundtables, newsletters or midyear and year-end market reports. They can also bring together lawyers from different practices around issues clients are actually dealing with, giving the firm a way to demonstrate the breadth of the experience that contributed to the ranking without making the content itself about the ranking.
Make Rankings More Useful in Pitches and Proposals
League table rankings are valuable third-party validation, which is why they appear so frequently in law firm pitches and RFP responses. The problem is that firms often add a logo and ranking number to a credentials slide without explaining why the prospect should care.
If you’re pitching a healthcare-focused private equity sponsor, an overall private equity ranking demonstrates transaction experience, but the underlying data may tell a much more relevant story. If a significant portion of that work involved healthcare transactions, show it. The same approach can be used for technology, middle-market deals, cross-border matters, financing work or other areas that relate directly to the prospect.
Look at the ranking through the prospect’s eyes and identify the part of the story that matters to their business. The ranking then becomes evidence supporting a more tailored message about the firm’s experience rather than another credential competing for space on a slide.
Use Rankings to Understand Your Competitors
Looking at league tables over time can also tell you quite a bit about what competing firms are doing. Pay attention to firms that are gaining ground, competitors that repeatedly appear on transactions involving important clients and firms that are becoming more active in industries or transaction categories where your firm wants to grow.
If another firm suddenly starts appearing on several transactions for one of your clients, look at the lawyers involved and what may have changed. There could be a new relationship, a lateral hire, a particular capability or another reason the competitor is getting the work. Similarly, if a competitor has moved significantly in an industry that matters to your firm, examine the clients and matters contributing to that growth.
Bringing this information into client team and practice planning discussions can help lawyers understand competitive changes before they become larger relationship problems. It can also identify firms, lawyers and capabilities worth watching as the market evolves.
Find the PR Story Behind the Ranking
A reporter may have limited interest in the fact that a law firm moved several positions in a league table, while the market activity responsible for that movement may be very relevant to what the reporter covers. An increase in healthcare transactions, changes in private equity exit activity, new financing structures or growing activity in a particular subsector can all become potential media angles.
PR teams can use league table information to identify lawyers who have been particularly active in a market and determine whether their recent experience gives them a useful perspective on a broader story. The data can also help identify subjects for bylined articles, media briefings and commentary tied to developments reporters are already covering.
This is another reason marketing, business development, PR and competitive intelligence teams should share what they’re learning from league table data. The same information that identifies a client development opportunity may also point to a media opportunity or a topic the firm should be discussing publicly.
Bring League Table Analysis Into Practice and Industry Planning
League table trends can be useful when practice and industry leaders are deciding where to focus their business development efforts and resources. If the firm has steadily increased its activity in a particular industry or transaction category, look at what contributed to that growth and whether there are ways to build on it through client programs, industry conferences, original research, content, sponsorships, PR or recruiting.
Declines deserve the same analysis. A change in ranking may reflect lower activity among important clients, work moving to competitors, lawyer departures or a broader change in the market. Understanding what is happening underneath the number gives leadership much better information for planning than the ranking alone.
Looking at these trends over several reporting periods can also help determine whether the areas the firm has identified as growth priorities are showing up in actual matters and market share. If they aren’t, the data can help start a more useful discussion about why.
Build a Business Development Review Into the Rankings Process
When an important league table is released, add a short business development review to the firm’s usual promotional process. Bring together the people who understand the data, the clients and the practice and look at what the results suggest beyond the external announcement.
Review which clients drove the ranking and whether there are areas where those relationships could be expanded. Look at active organizations the firm doesn’t currently represent and determine whether any should become priority prospects. Identify competitors appearing around important clients, lawyers who may have a reason to reconnect with particular contacts and trends that could become content, events or media opportunities.
Assign responsibility for the strongest ideas and revisit them later. Otherwise, even very good analysis can become another document that gets circulated once and forgotten. A relatively short review can produce several concrete client discussions, prospect opportunities, outreach ideas and marketing initiatives from information the firm has already spent significant time and resources collecting.
So Now What?
League table rankings are great credentials and absolutely worth promoting. But once the announcement goes out, there’s still a lot more you can do with the information behind the ranking. Look at which clients are doing more deals, which companies are becoming more active, where competitors are showing up, which relationships could be stronger and where your firm has experience that clients and prospects may not know about.
That’s where league tables get much more interesting from a business development perspective. They can give you reasons to reach out to a client, reconnect with a prospect, bring an opportunity to a partner or start a conversation around something happening in the market. So celebrate the ranking and share it, but keep going. There’s a lot of useful information sitting behind those numbers, and you can use it all year long.
Frequently Asked Questions About League Table Rankings
What should a law firm do when it receives a strong league table ranking?
Start by promoting it across the places where clients and prospects are likely to encounter the firm, including the website, lawyer bios, LinkedIn, pitch materials, practice descriptions and relevant client communications. Then look at the information behind the ranking. Who were the clients and matters that contributed to it? Which industries or types of transactions stand out? Who else is active in those areas? That analysis can give you ideas for client outreach, prospecting, content and conversations with lawyers about where there may be opportunities.
How can league table rankings be used for business development?
Use them as a starting point for identifying companies and relationships worth exploring. Look at which clients are particularly active, which prospects are doing more deals, which companies are working with competing firms and where your firm already has experience that could open a door. You can also use the data to prepare lawyers for client meetings and give them specific reasons to reconnect with people in their networks.
Should firms promote league table rankings on LinkedIn?
Yes, but give people some context. A post that only announces a ranking doesn’t tell the reader very much. Explain what the ranking represents, connect it to the work the team has been doing and recognize the lawyers and clients involved where appropriate. You can also use the ranking as a reason to create additional posts about the market, deal activity or trends the team is seeing.
Where else should league table rankings be used?
Think beyond the announcement. Rankings can be incorporated into lawyer bios, practice and industry pages, pitch decks, RFP responses, credentials materials, recruiting materials, award submissions and other places where third-party validation strengthens the firm’s story. They can also support media pitches and speaking proposals when the ranking helps establish the team’s experience in a particular market.
Can league table data help identify prospective clients?
Yes. The underlying tables can show which companies are active, which firms are advising them and where your firm may already have relationships that can help create an introduction. Looking at the rankings over several periods can also help you spot companies whose activity is increasing or relationships that may be changing.
How can league tables help with existing clients?
Look at the work the client is doing across the market, not only the matters your firm handles. You may discover that the client is using other firms for work your firm could handle or that its activity is expanding into an area where another team at your firm could help. That gives relationship partners much better information for conversations about the client’s business and potential areas for growth.
Do league table rankings matter for Google and AI search?
They can. Rankings create third-party references connecting a firm and its lawyers with particular practices, industries and types of transactions. That can add to the information available when someone researches a lawyer or firm through Google, ChatGPT or another AI search tool. Rankings work best as part of a broader digital presence that also includes strong bios, practice pages, articles, media coverage, speaking engagements and other credible sources that consistently reinforce what the firm and its lawyers are known for.
How often should marketing and business development teams review league table data?
Don’t wait for the annual announcement. Depending on the ranking and practice, it can be useful to review the data quarterly or around major reporting periods and compare what is changing. Which companies have become more active? Which firms are moving up? Are new players appearing? Are important clients working with competitors? A regular review makes the information much more useful for business development because you can act while the activity is still relevant.
What is the biggest missed opportunity with league table rankings?
Stopping after the LinkedIn post, website announcement and congratulatory email. Those are worthwhile, but the ranking is also giving you market intelligence. Spend time with the underlying data, combine it with what you know about your clients and relationships and use it to identify a handful of specific actions. That’s where a league table ranking can become much more useful to the firm.
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