Don’t start with the form
It’s directory season. Again.
Across the land, BD teams are opening last year’s submission, renaming it FINAL_v2_2027_NEW.docx, and preparing themselves for several months of chasing lawyers for information they promised to send last Friday.
If the only outcome from hundreds of collective hours of effort is a Tier 3 ranking, you’re missing a trick.
Done properly, the directories process can be a useful BD exercise. Over the next three weeks, we’re going to look at how.
Here are three things to start with. Enjoy.
#1. Do your homework
Before you ask anyone a single question, work out what you already know.
Pull together last year’s submission, recent pitches, press releases, website copy, matter data, client feedback and anything else that tells you what the practice has been doing.
Chuck everything you can find into a SharePoint folder (other data repositories are available) and then use your favourite LLM to help you interrogate it.
What’s changed? Which clients keep appearing? Which sectors are growing? Where are the strongest matters? What claims are you making without much evidence? Which stories have you been telling for three years that might now need a refresh?
The aim isn’t to replace judgement with AI. It’s to stop highly paid, time poor people spending hours rediscovering information the firm already has.
Three Things task: Before sending out your first information request, ask: what can we answer ourselves?
#2. Get some humans around a table
Directories shouldn’t be an annual form-filling exercise. They’re an opportunity to have a proper conversation about the practice.
Get the practice leadership, BD team and, where relevant, your directories agency together.
Who are your genuinely market leading individuals? Who should you be building a profile for over the next three to five years (top tip – it’s usually NOT the ones who tell you it should be them)? Which emerging partners or associates need more visibility, stronger client relationships or better matters?
That second question is particularly important.
If your directories strategy only focuses on the people who are already ranked, you’re documenting the past rather than building the future.
Three Things task: Identify the people you’d like to see ranked in three to five years’ time. Then work backwards.
#3. Decide what you want to be famous for
Before you start drafting, decide what story you’re trying to tell. Not 14 different stories. Not every conceivable thing the team has ever done. What are the two or three things you genuinely want the market to associate with the practice?
That’s a human decision.
Once you’ve made it and are clear on your objective, AI becomes incredibly useful. You can compare that positioning against previous submissions, test whether the evidence actually supports it, identify gaps and help draft a much clearer narrative.
But don’t ask AI to decide your strategy for you. Otherwise, you risk producing an extremely well-written description of absolutely nothing.
Three Things task: Finish this sentence: “We want this practice to be famous for…”
If you can’t do it in a couple of lines, you probably haven’t made enough choices yet.
Chat to Tina by voice, when you’re between meetings, on the commute to/from work, or heading into something you’d rather avoid.
Final thought
The long-term aim isn’t to get slightly better at filling in forms.
It’s to begin a behavioural change programme which captures intelligence throughout the year so that, eventually, the directory submission becomes an output of your BD activity rather than an annual endurance test.
Push button. Review. Improve. Submit.
That’s when the ranking increasingly becomes the by-product. The real prize is the better understanding of your clients, matters, people and market that you’ve built along the way.
Next week, we’ll look at how to extract all that valuable matter information from lawyers without sending yet another spreadsheet.
We’re building a team of voice enabled AI assistants to support you with BD activities and allow you to spend more time being human. Interested? We’d love to chat.
