Technology and Legal Rankings: An Increasingly Direct Relationship

For years, rankings such as Chambers and The Legal 500 have been viewed primarily through the lens of marketing, business development, and, naturally, the partners themselves.

Technology seemed to be part of another conversation.

One department could focus on submissions, client referrals, reputation, and search engine optimization, while IT continued to handle infrastructure, support, security, applications, and internal projects.

I think that distinction is starting to make less and less sense.

Not because the rankings have shifted to evaluating which firms have more tools, more artificial intelligence, or greater investment in technology. Nor because a good platform can replace legal quality, the depth of a firm’s team, or the significance of the cases it handles.

But yes, because technology is beginning to influence several of the capabilities that the rankings already take into account and that clients value when they talk about a firm. And that relationship is becoming more apparent.

First, an important clarification

I don't think a firm will improve its ranking simply by having more or better technology. The leading directories continue to focus on essentially professional and market-related factors.

Chambers considers, among other criteria, legal ability, client service, team capabilities, commercial awareness, diligence, and efficiency. The Legal 500 applies its own methodology and considers factors such as the quality and complexity of work, the strength and depth of the team, client relationships, and the practice’s market positioning. It also expressly includes innovation, legal technology, and service delivery capabilities among the factors that may form part of its assessment.

In its additional criteria, The Legal 500 also refers to a firm’s commitment to IT and its use to improve client services.

Technology, therefore, does not replace the fundamental factors that underpin a strong ranking, but it is no longer entirely disconnected from them.

The First Connection Is in the Client Experience

This is where I believe the connection is most evident.

When clients talk about a law firm, they rarely separate the quality of the legal advice from the way the service was delivered.

They remember whether they received timely responses, whether they knew what was happening with their matter, whether information was communicated clearly, whether documents were available when needed, whether billing was transparent and easy to understand, or whether they constantly had to chase the team for updates.

Chambers considers factors such as responsiveness, speed of service, and clarity of communication when assessing client service.

None of these factors depends exclusively on technology. However, many of them can be enhanced — or undermined — by it.

Effective document management can make information more accessible. Simple automation can reduce certain response times. The right platform can make it easier to track matters and monitor their progress. A well-managed CRM can help maintain continuity in client relationships and preserve institutional knowledge of each client.

A poorly designed technology architecture, on the other hand, can produce exactly the opposite results.

Clients are unlikely to say: “This firm has an excellent technology architecture.”

They are much more likely to say something far more meaningful: “They are easy to work with.”

And that perception matters.

Efficiency Is Becoming Part of the Value Proposition

For many years, technology investments were justified internally in terms of cost reduction, productivity, or business continuity.

All of these remain important. But in professional services, efficiency is also becoming an increasingly important part of the client experience.

Among its assessment criteria, Chambers considers examples of organizational efficiency and innovation that save clients time or money. The Legal 500 also includes service delivery and technology among the factors that may form part of its assessment.

This reveals an interesting connection.

A law firm that effectively uses document management, automation, collaboration tools, analytics, or artificial intelligence can reduce administrative tasks, avoid duplication of effort, make better use of its institutional knowledge, and respond more quickly.

That alone, however, does not necessarily mean it will deliver better service. What matters is how the firm translates those efficiencies into tangible benefits.

If they enable the firm to allocate its teams more effectively, improve quality, reduce response times, or deliver greater value to clients, technology moves beyond being merely an internal improvement and begins to influence the client experience.

And that experience may ultimately be reflected in client references, interviews, and market perception.

Technology Can Also Influence the Depth of a Team

There is another aspect that I find particularly interesting. Both Chambers and The Legal 500 consider, using their own terminology and assessment criteria, the strength and depth of a team when evaluating a practice.

At first glance, this may seem to have little to do with technology, but I believe there is a connection.

A law firm where a significant amount of knowledge resides with specific individuals has different capabilities from one that has successfully organized its past work, templates, legal reasoning, precedents, and accumulated experience so that they can be accessed and reused by the rest of the team.

This becomes even more important with artificial intelligence. The advantage will not simply come from providing every lawyer with an AI tool, but from enabling that technology to work with the firm's own reliable, well-organized, and accessible knowledge, supported by appropriate controls.

Effective knowledge management can help ensure that institutional experience does not remain solely in the minds of a few professionals. And that, in turn, can help strengthen the capabilities of the team as a whole.

AI Could Accelerate This Connection

Artificial intelligence could make this connection even more evident. Not because legal rankings will reward firms simply for using more AI. In fact, using it without sound judgment, proper governance, or adequate controls can create new problems rather than solve existing ones.

However, when a law firm successfully integrates AI into reasonably well-structured processes, supported by its own institutional knowledge and appropriate controls, opportunities begin to emerge for improving legal research, document review, retrieval of precedents, consistency, response times, and information management.

Many of these capabilities can ultimately influence aspects of service that clients directly experience.

And this introduces another important factor: clients’ own expectations.

Thomson Reuters’ Future of Professionals 2026 research shows that in-house legal professionals increasingly expect their external law firms to demonstrate AI-enabled value through greater efficiency, quality, and innovation. At the same time, there remains a significant gap between these expectations and the value many clients believe they are currently receiving.

As companies incorporate AI and automation into their own operations, they will also become better equipped to question how their external legal advisers work and what additional value they are delivering.

A law firm that merely has access to the same tools as everyone else is unlikely to achieve sustainable differentiation on that basis alone.

What will make the difference is how the firm integrates these tools into its way of working and, above all, how much of that value it can ultimately deliver to its clients.

Technology, Legal Rankings, and Competitiveness Are Becoming Increasingly Interconnected

For many years, technology was regarded primarily as an internal function. Marketing and business development looked outward, while IT focused inward.

That distinction is becoming less clear. Effective technology management can influence the client experience, efficiency, team capabilities, knowledge management, innovation, and a firm's ability to handle increasingly complex matters.

Several of these factors are directly or indirectly related to the capabilities and perceptions that leading legal directories assess. This does not mean that technology will become the determining factor in a firm's ranking.

The quality of legal work will remain central, as will the significance of the matters handled, the strength of the practice, its legal professionals, and the reputation it has built in the market.

But I believe we will see an increasingly close connection between them.

Legal Rankings Are Likely to Continue Focusing on More Than Just How Much Technology a Firm Has

What they do assess are capabilities such as quality, client service, team depth, efficiency, innovation, commercial awareness, and market perception. And technology is already influencing many of these areas.

Perhaps that is why, rather than asking how much IT can contribute to achieving a ranking, it is worth considering a different question:

How well prepared is a law firm’s technology management function to strengthen the capabilities for which its clients — and ultimately the market — recognize and value the firm?