Listed below are the responses I received from my inquiry about MH, some
folks also sent me the AMLAW 200 information and another librarian sent
me a list of ALA responses to the same question..
Thank you all for your responses
Russell F. Altman
Director of Information Services
Haynsworth Sinkler Boyd, P.A.
1201 Main Street
Suite 2200
Columbia, SC 29201
email- raltman@hsblawfirm.com
Phone- 803-540-7858
<<Copy of Martindale Hubbell review (AmLaw 200).XLS>>
I am not a firm, but at this point, I will be keeping MH because it is
an old school reference that people want to see in the public law
library. Which for local firms here means firms can dump it and if they
really need to see it, they can call me and I will provide...I bet it is
similar in your area. Why have multiple sets when one per county or even
region will do?
Yes, we are considering declining representation in Martindale. They
came back with a serious discount. One thing we did was look at the
AmLaw 200. I'll attach a table that shows who buys profiles and at which
level.
We had the same managing partner for more than a decade, a few years
back. He mulled-over the possibility of dropping MH, but never decided
to actually do so.
For the past few years, the managing partner position has rotated every
year; and there has been no discussion of MH that has filtered down to
my level.
I am presuming that the partners still consider MH to be more useful
than not, notwithstanding its ever-increasing cost.
I know that this is sort of a "non-answer", but perhaps it will be
useful in the scope of the greater discussion...
We cancelled our subscription last year. It became too expensive for
what we felt was beneficial to us. I would be interested to know what
others have done.
Our marketing department is going through the same determination
currently. For what it's worth, we surveyed the Am Law 200 firms to
determine which ones are still paying for listings in the print
directory. We found that 29 firms are currently not listing. This
excludes Heller, which is basically dissolved at this point. Also, two
of the firms not listing in the directory have merged, so they probably
only count as one.
yes, as far as I know, since it is a marketing budget item. possibly the
books allocate to the Library so far as is possible to separate the
costs
I stopped purchasing Martindale-Hubbell with the 2005 edition.
We did make the decision to continue at least for another year for a
variety of reasons including that some of our clients do request our
MH's ratings. Martindale is also apparently changing to explore other
avenues for connecting potential clients to lawyers within their
directory. I would like to remain anonymous both in name and firm, but
also would love to know where everyone else is going on this and why.
We've stopped getting new editions. But are keeping a few past editions
on the shelf.
We signed up for a 2 year contract that included access to another
product at a reduced price. We are going to continue for now. Our
contract is up for renewal shortly and we will re-evaluate the status
and the value at that time.
we have discontinued due to cost and lack of apparent results. the firm
can not account for a single reference from our listing with them.
We stopped subscribing years ago. We just didn't think it was a value
proposition. If you closely review listings for big firms you'll see
most have them very limited profiles and those are often unpaid. (i.e.
we cancel but they keep publishing it)
We surveyed some folks through our ALA group in Sept. of this year and
the answers are below.
(ALA Group Responses)
We are still with MH and always will be...........its expensive but the
reputation of MH outlives the cost.
We go with MDH. Not FindLaw.
We just reduced our M-H listing to the very basics - where they were
admitted, where they went to school, and what their practice areas are -
and it's still outrageously expensive. I think this will be the last
year we do M-H.
We are still with Martindale,
Donnell: We still have our listing with MH but we have cut back the
descriptions tremendously. We also list with Findlaw. We have had many
discussions regarding dropping MH but the attorneys still like their
rating system. Good luck. Connie
We called our local representative in and told him we thought it was too
expensive. He offered us a discount and told me something that I did not
know. They charge about $265.00 for four lines of text. He advised us to
cut down on our Associate biographies as a way to cut costs. We are
thinking of going to Findlaw as well.
We are exploring this option as well. Would you be willing to share your
responses?
We cancelled our MH listing a couple of years ago. A smooth talking
sales person recently convinced one of our partners to give it another
try based on all of the improvements they have made. I find myself right
back in the same mess we were in before: they are trying to charge us
more for things we didn't agree to; errors on the online listing; adding
a website that we didn't ask for. That same partner came into my office
today and told me that he was playing on the MH online site, typed his
name in and nothing came up. If it was up to me we would have continued
fine without it.
We have greatly scaled ours back.
We still use MN. Our marketing director feels it is necessary.
think they are outrageously priced and I recently questioned the same.
Our final decision was to list the attorneys without bios, list their
email address and link to our website. This reduced the cost
significantly. We will invest part of the savings to enhance the
website. We are not listed with FindLaw.
We are still listed with MH.
We have looked at this carefully the last two years. Last year we
whittled our listing down a little but, as you know, they charge you the
most for the "mast head" so it doesn't end up saving you much money.
This year, we decided to beef up our Firm Profile and reduce the bios to
birth information (required), Education and Areas of Practice. We also
added another reference to our website with the hope that if people want
more information, they'll go there. It only saved us about $1,000 to do
that so it is still frustrating. They just don't "get it" that their
listing is getting less and less valuable as time goes on.
We have a minimal listing with Martindale Hubbell; Our website is hosted
by FindLaw so we're also listed there.
Still with Martindale
Tried findlaw-ineffective. Expanded contract with MH.
This year we reduced the text in our Martindale listing by about half
(items such as long bios, speaking engagements, papers written, etc.)
and reduced our subscription cost by several thousand dollars. Our
current listing simply shows attorney names, education and areas of
practice. We have determined that the people using Martindale are others
in the legal field and they are merely looking for a website address for
the firm or attorney. Our firm's website contains all the information we
removed from our Martindale listing - and more.
We're still with Martindale, but have really cut back on our listings
because of the price. The only reason we've continued with them is to
keep the AV rating for our shareholders; they feel that's important to
their clients. If not for that, we'd have dropped it entirely.
We still have Martindale Hubble.
We are still with M-H but the price has gotten completely ridiculous!
I'm curious to hear what you learn. Would you mind sharing? Our costs
are very high because last year we updated our company profile and added
a whole bunch of additional text. I am going back now and deleting a lot
of the text and will refer to our website instead. They told us that is
why our costs increased so much last year. Thanks! Roxanne
We remain with MH, but begrudgingly! I hate their fees, so we've reduced
our content quite a bit. Good luck with your decision; our partners were
not comfortable letting it go altogether.
We are not for sure what we are going to do this upcoming year either.
If you don't mind -Please share any info you receive. Thanks so much
We just renewed our listing and do get referrals from M-H and Findlaw.
We cut down the size of our listing though, to keep it more in line with
our expectation of cost. Kim
We still have our listing.
We gave up MH a few years ago to invest in our website.
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