Should we care about legal awards?

“113,” we declared forcefully.

It was a balmy London evening in the early 2000s. We were in the bar of one of London’s more venerable hotels. Tired, sticky and in tuxedos and cummerbunds, we were hoping for some liquid sustenance after unsuccessfully attending a legal awards ceremony. Our attempts were, however, being foiled by a pompous maître d’ who announced that the bar was only open to hotel residents. The implication being that we didn’t look the type who would be allowed to stay there. Our party was made up of an Australian and me, so, in an act of post-colonial defiance, we made up a room number.

I remember looking at the ambience and thinking that it was all a bit grubby. Smaller and less tasteful I thought than Harihara Mangalam, my paternal grandmother’s family pile in faraway Malabar. Unlike grandma’s though, Princess Di and Churchill were rumored to have stayed in this establishment, which may explain the haughty attitude on display.

My musings ended when the waiter returned wearing an expression akin to that of a vegan who has found a caterpillar in the salad. We were frigidly informed that, as “Sir appears to have made a mistake”, we would have to leave. Our act of historic retribution had to come to an end, and we left after giving that patronising fellow a cheeky wink.

The legal awards industry, which seems to have gained great popularity over the years is, I feel, a lot like that hotel we had found ourselves in. 

A pretentious, somewhat tasteless environment, with questionable antecedents and participants all dressed up while acting like they were doing something important. Finally, there is also the small matter of the opaque rules of admission.

Full disclosure - I have been on both sides of the awards show. I have been chosen to receive a few and I have also been a jury member doing the said choosing. Not for the same award, I hasten to add.

This experience has given me a good view into the process of identifying the alleged best and brightest and the problems inherent in such an endeavour.

The first difficulty that arises is that of choosing the nominees. Does one only allow third party nominations, or should it be self-nomination?

I remember attending an industry (non-legal) conference many years ago. The invitation had come from a renowned business consultancy who were the main sponsor of the shindig being held in a suitably ersatz location (A Vegas hotel, if memory serves me well). I knew this particular firm well because they had recently been advisors to a customer on a mega outsourcing deal. After many months of deliberations, we had recently been awarded the contract and since this had involved many rounds of raucous negotiations with the said firm, I presumed they were extending an olive branch to me with the invitation. One of the events during the conference was the conferment of a ‘Lifetime Achievement Award’. The name of the nominee sounded vaguely familiar, but it was only when we met that I realised I knew him. He was the CIO of the same customer. In other words, he had farmed out work to the consultancy, and in return, they had given him a suitable award. 

I remember another firm being nominated for an award by one of their clients. What the nomination failed to disclose was that the client submitting the nomination was the spouse of one of the partners of the firm being nominated.

So, allowing nominations seems to be fraught with difficulties, particularly when some seem to believe that conflict of interest, as a concept, is open to interpretation.

What about self-nomination then? 

To be honest, my biggest problem with it is that I was never a front bencher. We all know the type, those who always have their hand up and love to hear their own voice. Self-nomination is just more of the same.

Also, if you go to enough conferences, you will find that it’s the same crowd attending each of them. Self-nomination perpetuates the same bunch congratulating themselves for having won the same awards every year (and to be clear: using the terms ‘humbled’ or ‘privileged’ does not take away the fact that you are tooting your own horn).

There is also the issue of relevance. 

Going back to the awards ceremony I mentioned at the beginning of this piece (yes, the one in the hotel with that bar), we had been pipped to the post by another law firm. They had won due to their stellar work advising the UK government on a prominent outsourcing transaction. Barely a week after they received the award for ‘Best IT Deal of the Year’ (or something on those lines), the deal was very publicly cancelled by Her Majesty’s government. The rumour on the street was that it was cancelled due to procurement irregularities and because the contract was found to be ‘not fit for purpose’. So, not the best IT deal of the year then, was it? I wonder if the silverware was ever returned.

Finally, the money thing.

It is not uncommon for award ceremonies of a certain type to request a donation or a fee for booking a table at their events. A kind of quid pro quo. Cue the earlier conversation around conflict of interest.

To be honest, these are problems that afflict all fields and aren’t special to legal awards.

You have probably heard of the famous ‘30 under 30’ or ‘40 under 40’ lists that are published by prestigious magazines. While I appreciate the odds of being on the list improving with age, things are not as straightforward as they seem.

In particular, it turns out that some of those listed don’t become the successes they were expected to be. In fact, some of them have even landed up in prison. It’s not surprising that when a list is made with dubious aims, it may include some equally dubious people.

So, it’s all a bit ridiculous. I hear you say: why do it then? 

For law firms and consultancies, I understand the need to market themselves.

It can also be helpful for people looking for lawyers. Say, you urgently need a lawyer in Suriname and don’t know anyone. You would probably look for someone on the net. The first few names on the search engine will probably be those who have won an award or are on some list of top lawyers. While this doesn’t necessarily mean they are good lawyers, you can use it as a justifiable proxy criteria in the absence of anything else. It tells you that, at a minimum, they are sophisticated enough to know the importance of marketing and they probably make enough money to have done something about it (as an experiment, go ahead and type “Suriname lawyers” in Google and see which results pops up first).

Companies that win awards do better than their peers, as evidenced by a study of the Center of Quality Excellence of the University of Leicester. The Leicester study suggests that sales by award-winning companies can increase on average by 77% compared to those who haven’t won an award (A word of caution: the study is focused on the prescribed, objectively quantified quality models of the European Foundation for Quality Management and hence may not have a direct correlation to awards in the legal field though it indicates the general impression that awards carry in the industry).

Also, given law firms generally don’t make it to the 'great places to work' list (shameless plug of one of my earlier pieces), nominating for or sponsoring an award is a good way to show your lawyers that you value them. Yes, that doesn’t mean that you are the best lawyer in any objective manner, but at least you have one trophy more than your law school nemesis at the firm across the road. Competition, I have found, can be good for motivation.

I am less convinced by its need for in-house lawyers though. Perhaps it’s one way to show that you are valued by your peers even if your employer may not quite agree.

Please don’t get me wrong though, I am not against having some fun.

Taken in its right spirit, awards are a fun way to spend an evening. Public speaking and networking are important skills in a lawyer and any opportunity to build that ‘muscle’ is more than welcome.

If you have the chance to attend or receive one, please, by all means, slurp the bubbly, enjoy the recognition and the chance to rib your colleagues. Have a night on the town. After all, as Gerald Nachman reminds us, “the best thing about a cocktail party is being asked to it”.

What is troubling though is the general impression that these awards provide some kind of certification of excellence. So if there is one thing I would personally recommend, it would be to not include it in your personal CV or social media profile as the leader.

Now, in keeping with Carroll’s description of Alice: “She generally gave herself very good advice (though she very seldom followed it)”, I hope you will excuse me if I stop here as I need to respond to an invitation to attend an awards ceremony which they assure me, will change my life.

Navneet Hrishikesan is an in-house lawyer who lives in Bangalore.

All views expressed here are in his personal capacity and should not be taken too seriously. Any people referenced are made up, though the issues themselves may be real. He also denies the allegation that he wrote this piece to avoid receiving awards in the future.