Each year at Passle we publish our annual UK Legal Thought Leadership Index. Throughout the report, we measure and benchmark the performance of the UK's top 100 law firms to offer a picture of how each performs in the categories of thought leadership.

One measure we look at in the report is Thought Leadership per lawyer. Larger firms with bigger marketing and BD teams can be expected to create more thought leadership, but every year this list turns up some exceptional firms that are surpassing expectations and leading the discussion in their markets.

You can download the report here where you can also ask to have a personalised report made up to see how your firm ranks across all the various measurements used in the report.

THE NUMBERS

This year, the top ten is led by Wiggin, coming in at over double the thought leadership per lawyer of the next best firm. 

To put the achievements of these top ten firms into context we need to look across all of the Top 100 UK law firms. Doing so shows that the average firm produces a little over 1 insight per lawyer per year.

VIEWPOINTS

These firms have done what few are able to do. Of the top 100 firms analysed, only 12 were able to produce more than 2 insights per year per lawyer. 

Despite being highly knowledgeable, highly valued and the main source of competitive advantage for their firms, most fee earners aren't demonstrating that knowledge to their clients and prospects.

These 12 firms above have seized the opportunity to empower their fee earners, give their experts a voice and command a share of the collective mind space above and beyond what could be expected for a firm of their size.

HOW TO TURN YOUR BUSY EXPERTS INTO THOUGHT LEADERS

Every firm is different in its makeup, goals and market landscape. That being said there are a few core steps that firms with top thought leadership programs get right. These steps are agnostic of industry and goal and form what we know to be best practice for creating genuinely useful and authentic content that drives business growth.

These steps are outlined in more detail here:

• Bring the right people on board your thought leadership program. You need effective sponsors, genuinely expert authors and a committed cohort of supporters to help content reach the right audience.
  
  
• Build a picture of where inspiration can come from. A blank paper is exceedingly difficult to write from but there are dozens of developments in the world every day that would benefit from an expert perspective.
   
• Have a simple and clearly understood workflow from inspiration to publishing. Any step that complicates this process will reduce your flow of thought leadership.
  
  
• Develop a governance process with a trusted approver for each author who can make the decision quickly and effectively on which edits to make and when to publish.
  
  
• Have a mechanism to share your content externally and internally. One of the best ways to judge if your content creation is genuinely helpful for clients and prospects is if your own people are reading it and sharing it with their networks.