Martindale-Hubbell : “The leading client development company for the legal profession?”

In all of its marketing materials and press releases LexisNexis Martindale-Hubbell claims it is the leading client development company for the legal profession. (Example)

Everytime I read this, it causes me to pause and wonder how Martindale-Hubbell makes this claim. Do you lawyers and legal marketing professionals consider Martindale to be the leading client development company? Do you consider Martindale to be the leading client development resource for your law firm? I would be interested in your thoughts and would share them in confidence on my blog.

Don’t get me wrong, Martindale is a fine company with the leading lawyer directory and a very well respected rating system for lawyers. The directory has been around for over 100 years and with the advent of the Internet is now available online as opposed to in hard copy only. In addition Martindale has other services such as functions where in-house counsel and law firms exchange info and learn from each other and produces thousands of relatively simple Web sites for law firms listed in the directory.

But I am not sure how primarily being a publisher of a lawyer directory makes Martindale the leading client development company for the legal profession. If being in a directory were the leading client development tool wouldn’t the yellow pages be the leading client development company for the legal profession?