Celebrating Kidd Aitken’s 10th Anniversary

This year we’re celebrating Directors Daniel Kidd and Jacob Aitken founding Kidd Aitken Legal Marketing in 2015. In the last decade, the Kidd Aitken team has grown to over 50 professionals including former directory Editors, deputy Editors, researchers, in-house marketing executives and solicitors. This makes Kidd Aitken one of the largest legal directory consultancies in the world, handling 3500 - 4000 legal directory submissions each year for over 300 law firms around the world.

As part of our 10-year anniversary celebration, Daniel Kidd and Jacob Aitken sat down to reflect on the journey of building Kidd Aitken —from the challenges of starting a niche consultancy to becoming a trusted partner to legal marketing teams worldwide.

Watch the full interview featuring reflections on the last decade, answers to FAQs, and insights from real case studies on here.

Tell me more about Kidd Aitken from 2015 to present:

[Daniel] There was clearly an appetite for insight into how to improve legal rankings, and increasingly a realisation that the submissions process was very time-consuming and laborious so law firms were looking to find a solution. We realised early on that we needed to scale up our business to meet that demand for outsourcing.

[Jacob] Right, legal directories are a lot of work but because of our size, because of our resources and because of our platform, we’re really able to have a dedicated team working with a client, who are fully committed to them for that research cycle.

[Daniel] Plus, the geographical location of our team, the languages they bring to the table, and also the experience they bring of having worked on various regional directories - the US directories, mainland Europe, the UK, Asia-Pacific, Latin America - we really do have the world covered.

What makes us stand out is that we are not simply an editing and filing service. We are absolutely acting as strategic partners with clients, especially with clients we work with year on year. It’s wonderful to get the satisfaction, both for the client and for our team, of putting a strategic plan in place then seeing the results.

How has the legal directory consultancy landscape changed, especially with development of A.I.?

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[Daniel] What’s really striking to me, looking back, is how often we came across people who were just not aware that legal directory consultants existed. Now, if you look around, it’s become a much more mature industry. The vast majority of major law firms are now aware, and will have used, legal directory consultants.

[Jacob] I think everyone is more clued up on the process, and the existence of consultancies such as Kidd Aitken has helped with that process. We increasingly come across very impressive business development professionals who really do know their stuff, and I think that’s great to see.

In terms of the future, legal tech is something that is everywhere now and firms are really investing in it, some of them belatedly, but I think there's huge potential in what we can do.

[Daniel] I'm excited to continue to explore how we can blend a really effective technological solution for the preparation of submissions with our decade of experience, knowledge and strategic insight, it’s is a really compelling proposition.  

[Jacob] It’s very strange to think back only a few years, now I wouldn’t dream of having a strategic call with a client and not doing that over video. I definitely think that video conferencing has helped us build stronger, more personal and better working relationships with our clients.

Final reflections:

[Daniel] We remain very good friends to this day, so, despite having been in business together for ten years now. There have been moments where, you know, that friendship's been tested, but I genuinely think that, based on our experience of Kidd Aitken, I would strongly disagree with the advice not work with your friends.

I think having somebody who you trust, having somebody that you kind of get and who gets you as your business  partner makes what can be a stressful and slightly lonely experience sometimes, of being a remote business owner a lot easier because you can have honest and quite direct conversations that you wouldn't be able to have otherwise. That's been a real bonus for me.

[Jacob] I completely agree and luckily, we have always seen eye to eye in terms of vision for the company.  I remember a fireside conversation, I think in California, where we had quite a heated debate about how big we could be and what steps we would need to put in place to be able to build a  structure that could take on any amount of work at any given point in the year and work to tight deadlines and potentially handle, as we now do, 250 submissions a year for a single client. I think we've come a long way, obviously since then, handling 4000+ submissions  in a year for our law firm clients globally.

Thank you to Daniel and Jacob, the incredible Kidd Aitken team, and the clients who have partnered with us over the years. Your trust and collaboration have been the foundation of our success.

Here’s to the next 10 years — and beyond!

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