Pain management
Directories season is well and truly upon us. In the last month, rankings have been released by both Chambers and Legal 500. LinkedIn has been awash with more plaques, badges and humble brags than an over enthusiastic girl guide.
At LINAR, directories are an enigma. We’ve spoken with over 50 stakeholders involved in the submissions process, ranging from the BD foot soldiers tasked with developing them, the partners who are thirsty for the rankings they provide and the outsourcers who seek to commercialise their creation. NO ONE has a good word to say about them. Not a single person. And yet, the 30+ law firms we’ve spoken to will not (or are not allowed) to contemplate giving them up?
Why? Ego mostly. The Fear Of Missing Out (FOMO) on a ranking or a client quote means that they will again embark on an opaque and thankless process over the next few months which takes significant time, effort and resources across most firms for attainment of the holy grail – a BAND 1 ranking.
Why are we bothered at LINAR? Because every minute you spend on directories, you are foregoing the opportunity to do proper BD. And because we think we can help.
Over the past three months, the LINAR team have developed Directorease, a technology enabled service designed to take the pain out of the directory submissions process. Here’s our view on the three main challenges with submission development and how Directorease will help you get the time back to concentrate on proper BD.
Enjoy.
#1. Existing information
Pitch docs. Cap stats. Previous submissions. Website bios. Press releases. Other people’s press releases. You will rarely start from scratch with a submission document as there is plenty of information available that you’ve amassed over the previous 12 months.
Problem is, it’s everywhere! If you’re anything like the stakeholders we spoke to, significant time, effort and frustration is expended trying to track down documentation that exists but you can’t quite put your finger on.
Directorease helps by sourcing, analysing and processing multiple information stores to extract relevant information and categorise for easy population of your submission template.
#2. New information
A lot of the detailed matter descriptions required for submissions reside with senior lawyers heads and are yet to be committed to paper. Our research with key stakeholders suggests that extraction requires lengthy info gathering meetings/interviews and repetitive follow ups to fill critical missing variables required by the directories houses.
Directorease solves this problem by:
- Developing tailored meeting scripts which prompt only for missing information required to complete the submission.
- Combining advanced transcription with smart prompting to identify submission gaps in near real time, ensuring that maximum ROI is generated for a single submissions meeting.
- Adding the content rich transcript to other data sources to enable the creation of a high quality submission document.
#3. Reusing information
Phew! Once the submission is done, it’s filed away (sometimes), ready to be used again in nine months time as the basis for next year’s submission.
What a waste. You’ve worked hard to craft a submission that is rich in valuable content and matter descriptions that clearly articulate the value to other clients. Not only that, it’s likely that your key bios have been updated and your practice group descriptions have been refreshed. Why leave that hard work buried in a (virtual) drawer?
Post submission, Directorease will synthesise your information and present it in a fromat that can be easily ingested to your website, experience databases, CRM and/or just about any other platform you’d like. And we’re not just talking here about a single submission. We’re talking about all submissions. Simple, effective processes that ensure you receive maximum value from the directories process across all of your BD and marketing channels.
If any of the above challenges resonated, we’re looking for five firms to partner with us and build a pain management solution for directory submissions. Come on, it’ll be fun!
