The firm was ranked in Tier 2 for Banking and Finance in one of the largest and most competitive jurisdictions in Legal 500’s EMEA Guide. Buoyed by the belief that they were market leaders, worthy of a top-tier ranking, the firm engaged LDC for its editing service.

Our work on the submission led to a number of tangible improvements, including:

• Fleshing out the firm’s lawyer bios, particularly in respect of referencing key distinguishers such as thought leadership examples, academic positions and a number of domestic awards which we believed served as an objective indicator of the practice’s qualities. 

• All of the key partners had also previously practiced in the US or UK and we fleshed out the tangible benefits that this provided, i.e. the fact that the practice represented several of the largest banks globally. 

• The standout international banks were briefly shortlisted, with an overview of their headquarters and total assets provided, to help the researcher fully appreciate the quality and geographical reach of the client base. We explicitly pointed out that the firm acted for 11 of the 30 largest banks globally, a helpful anecdote which nearly encapsulated the quality of the client base in just a single sentence.

• We also pointed out that the stellar list of international players was complemented by an equally formidable domestic list of banks. Knowing that the UK-based researcher may not have an intimate knowledge of the local market, we pointed out that this roster included 5 of the 6 largest banks.

• These points about the quality of the domestic and international client roster were enhanced with comparisons to peer firms. By looking at the published list of clients on directories websites, we were able to point out that peer firms generally lacked the large international names of our client and that, while many of them shared the largest domestic names with out client, most of them only acted for one or two of the 6 largest.

• We also helped the firm rebalance its exhibited workload and client list. While its banking client list was unbeatable, we also learned from discussions with the firm that they also leveraged a high-end list of alternative lenders. While not the most well-known names internationally, we were able to succinctly relay their quality to the researcher by pointing out that all names featured in the work highlights were publicly listed entities with market caps exceeding $1bn.

• The workload also lacked a focus on borrower-side work, which was easily rectified by adding some large financings handled on behalf of corporates. We again sought to convey the quality of these names to the researcher, providing figures such as market caps, annual revenue, number of overseas offices and employee count. 

• We further helped the firm showcase the breadth of its expertise by noting that their current workload leaned too heavily towards project and energy finance, which we knew would make the practice seem somewhat niche. We rectified this by picking out some of the weaker matters to be replaced by other financing types, including corporate and acquisition finance.

• Furthermore, we felt that certain key details were missing from the work highlights. The firm had a number of instructions which briefly glossed over preparing novel or unique financing transaction structures for certain clients though these would require further detail in order to secure full weighting.  We worked with them to ensure that the novel elements of each matter were tangibly conveyed to the researcher.

• There were also a number of project financings where the scale of the project related to major national infrastructure or unprecedented energy projects, several of which were the largest individual assets of their type. Knowing that the significance of these projects may be obvious to a domestic audience, but not necessarily a researcher based abroad, we conducted research into each of the projects, ensuring that their scale was made relatable through key figures.

• As a result of our work, the firm was promoted to Tier 1 after our very first collaboration.