I follow law-lib, a long time listserv resource for those interested in Law Librarianship. For the past several years a hot topic for discussion has been the renewals of Martdinale Hubbell Listings for Law Firms.
This week a summary of the latest summary was posted. I find it significant that even within this small set of responses more firms have decided to cancel or are negotiating for more benefits when renewing their listing.
Of the 34 librarians who responded for their firms, 15 have cancelled their listings, five are in the process of deciding whether or not to list, and 14 have retained their listings.
In the golden age of distinguished law firms, Martindale Hubbell listings were a given, the ratings were a powerful marketing tool and the directory was a great tool for finding local counsel. Now the ratings don’t matter so much and there are many ways to find local counsel. The given isn’t a given any longer and the cost-benefit analysis is proving that the cost just isn’t worth the investment for more firms each year.
This is not a new occurence but as more firms are giving up their listings, it makes it easier for those firms who benchmark against certain firms to justify the cancellation internally.
Law firms are slow to change business practices and sometimes publishers are slower to see the writing on the wall. This writing is getting darker each year and alternatives outside of price negotiation might be considered. Before I left the law firm world, the most useful part of the Martdinale Hubbell directories were the Law Digest.
It was surprising that the print was replaced with a stand-alone CD. It seemed like we had gone back in legal research methods about 10 years. Sure its available through LexisNexis but nothing is as handy as pulling the volume and checking the facts.
I don’t know if attorneys haven’t gotten more comfortable with the CD format but I thought that was a less than long-sighted solution. In my opinion, libraries would purchase the Law Digest in print without the directories. I hope that Lexis provides solutions that meet customer expectations and still makes them a modest profit. I don’t think that profit center will be the Martindale-Hubbell lawyer listings but I think they could gain great traction from their Law Digest.
Constance Ard September 19, 2009
Hello Constance,
I started writing elaborately here to answer your question behind this post, the relevancy of the Martindale-Hubbell offerin, and then I remembered Dave Danielson’s reply to a similar post in ‘What About Clients’ a few months ago:
http://www.whataboutclients.com/archives/2009/05/redux_martindal.html
If you have not read this post and comment I wholeheartedly recommend you do, as it touches the key issue of your post. If you read the comment you will see that many of ‘alternative solutions’ are based on Martindale-Hubbell services, and that also, as a service we are all tuned to hear and respond to the audience’s changing needs so that we can develop our products more where needed, keep as is where needed (interestingly you mentioned nothing is like the old books for Law Digest), and enhance where needed.
As a side note, I was surprised Martindale-Hubbell Connected was not mentioned. Connected, which we formally launched this March, builds an online professional network and offers community tools on top of the pools of information and content of the martindale.com site. I invite you to join and explore.