In-house counsel and a managing partner spoke at the Canadian Legal Summit on what they look for as judges
For our awards and recognition, my team fields the same questions every year. What are judges looking for? Why didn't we win? What separates a shortlisted submission from a winning one? I get these questions because Key Media runs several of the legal profession's most prominent recognition programs – from the Canadian Law Awards and Lexpert Rising Stars to the Top 25 Most Influential Lawyers and our suite of reader-voted boutique and regional firm rankings, alongside the Canadian Lexpert Directory, which has run its closed peer survey since 1994. Knowing the process from the inside doesn't always make those questions easier to answer.
So this year at the Canadian Legal Summit, I moderated a session designed to open up the conversation: "From Awards to Rankings: An Inside Look at How Legal Recognition Drives Visibility and Opportunity." I brought together three people whose experience cuts across the whole ecosystem – as nominators, judges, submitters, and recipients of recognition. What followed was one of the more candid conversations the summit produced.
The client's view
Fernando Garcia and Adrian Lang brought the in-house perspective to the panel. That was deliberate. In-house counsel are often the people deciding which law firms get hired – and both have served as judges for Key Media awards, giving them a clear-eyed view of what submissions actually look like from the other side.
Lang was direct about what moves a submission and what doesn't. "Using hyperbole around exceptional, this, et cetera, is only going to take you so far," she said. "You actually need to be explaining in detail why you meet the criteria." Data, she said, makes an outsized difference. Measurable outcomes – time saved, volume of work handled, deal size and its impact on a client – give reviewers something concrete to point to. "If there's other data points that will distinguish you and your submission from others, I think that's very helpful as well," she said.
Garcia returned to the idea of storytelling. "When we approach it, we're looking at it as trying to tell you a story," he said – not a list of matters handled, but a clear account of what was accomplished, who it affected, and why it mattered. He also flagged a pattern that undermines submissions more often than people realize: the copy-paste job. "We see the same submission done for 10 different people, and all of them basically making them the leader of that initiative. Well, all of a sudden, you got 10 people who are the leaders of that initiative. It doesn't make any sense," he said.
He made one other observation worth remembering. "It's a very small community. Sometimes I'm reading a submission, and I'm thinking, I know that person – I saw a LinkedIn post about something they did that isn't mentioned here." The gap between what lawyers actually do and what they put on paper is often wider than it should be.
The firm's reality
Kristin Taylor, managing partner at Cassels Brock & Blackwell LLP, brought the view from inside a major firm. "I have a bit of a love-hate relationship with these awards," she said. "The hate is that every single partner of mine thinks that they deserve an award." While that point got a laugh, her larger point was more substantive: the submission process is a strategic exercise. When done well, it forces a firm to ask which people and which initiatives it actually wants to amplify – and that question, taken seriously, can align with the firm's strategy and signal to clients what the firm genuinely stands for.
She also addressed the question of geography and firm size, which came up from the floor. As a judge, she said she actively tracks provincial representation in the firm’s submissions. "I keep a scorecard beside me, and I'm keeping track." Lang reinforced the point that submissions can come from any-sized firm: "It's not the shiny, fancy submission with all of the bells and whistles that comes from the big firms that catches my eye as a judge. It really is the content."
A new argument for recognition
The turn I hadn't anticipated came when Lang raised the effect of AI search on professional visibility. When clients search for legal expertise using AI tools – increasingly the default for many procurement teams and general counsel – those tools behave differently from a traditional search engine. They weigh earned media over paid media. A lawyer appearing in an independent editorial ranking or peer survey surfaces more prominently than one whose firm has invested in its own website optimization.
"You cannot buy your way into that search anymore," Lang said. "You have to figure out how to get earned media versus paid media if you want to be up in people's searches."
It's a new argument for recognition programs, and one I hadn't heard made quite that way before. The rankings, peer surveys, and judged awards the profession has long treated as marketing exercises are increasingly functioning as discoverability infrastructure. That changes the calculus, particularly for lawyers in smaller or regional practices who may have assumed the ecosystem wasn't built for them.
Garcia had the final word, and it was the clearest pitch on why all lawyers should consider participating. When someone asked whether it was worth submitting at all, his answer was unequivocal: "Do it. It's got a huge value on people's lives, their careers, and their appreciation in terms of the work that they've done."
Coming from someone who reads the submissions rather than produces them, that means a lot.
