Legal Marketing & PR

Get Into the Secret Directory that GCs Use to Find Law Firms

By Larry Bodine

We all know about Chambers, Best Lawyers, Leading Lawyers and other directories sold by commercial publishers.  But there's a near-secret online directory that corporations and in-house counsel actually use to find a law firm, and chances are you've never heard of it. 

It's the "Find a Law Firm" feature of Serengeti Tracker, a project management and billing software program used by 100,000 corporations in 180 countries.  So far about 20,000 law firms -- including all of the AmLaw 100 and 200 -- are in the client-created database.  But if none of your clients are using Serengeti, then you're not in the system and cannot be found by the vast majority of corporations.

For example, a quick search (with no filters) for law firms in Chicago turned up 550 results.  Corporate counsel can look up a law firm by name, expertise, location and practice area. The feature is built into the system, which is primarily designed for e-billing, tracking expenses, creating reports, storing documents and measuring the progress of an assignment against budget.

Serengeti also has a separate evaluation form to grade a law firm's performance on a particular matter.  It was considered so good that the Association of Corporate Counsel based their members only ACC Value Index on it.

So how do you get into the "Find a Lawyer" listing? Be the first law firm to advise your clients to use the Serengeti system, which will put you into the database. Right now, most corporations are using home-made excel spreadsheets to manage outside legal expenses, and you'll be doing your clients a big favor by advising them to use Serengeti.

Click on the graphic to see it full-size.

Full post as published by Larry Bodine's LawMarketing Blog on December 23, 2009 (boomark / email).