I previously suggested a Zagat-type service to rate lawyers. A new service may just do so.
Lawdragon ranks lawyers via a searchable web database and print publication. The home page explains:
“We’ve put to work our 100 years of experience reporting on lawyers to help you find the perfect lawyer to solve your legal problem, large or small. We rank attorneys exclusively based on your evaluations and our independent research. We are supported by the lawyers who pay to list additional information about their services; however, a lawyer does not have to pay money to be listed here.”
A 50+ page listing of the top 500 lawyers in the US (PDF) is available as well; the introduction explains that “to compile this definitive list, we interviewed thousands of people: corporate attorneys, litigators, judges, in-house counsel, prosecutors, law school professors, pro-bono practitioners, law firm managers, and legal recruiters — to name just a few.”
It will be interesting to see the market uptake and impact. I still believe what I wrote in my last post about lawyer ratings: “Arming GCs with outside counsel ratings would bring discipline to the market. Discipline would likely, over time, cause firms and lawyers to adopt more efficient ways of working. And that would lead to viewing technology in a different light, shifting it from mere tool to competitive necessity and differentiator.”