However, I will add that although general reputation/market recognition is an important feature in assessing a firm's practice area, it does not necessarily tell the full story. Other aspects you may consider include:
what is the size of the practice area within the firm, and how important of a revenue generator is it? how many practitioners and partners does it have, and does it punch above its weight in terms of impact when compared to the sizes of similarly ranked firms? what is the history of the practice area within the firm - has it seen a lot of recent growth, or has it always been a core part of the firm's practice? and what are the firm's plans in the future for it? does the firm have a very strong reputation only in the UK, or also in other important jurisdictions and globally? are there any specific features of the practice's client base as compared to that of its rivals'? are there any particular sectors that the practice has particular expertise in? how is the practice areas subdivided between different teams? are there any specific high-end mandates that the firm has recently won - and what might you infer from that regarding the market position of the firm's practice area as compared to that of its rivals'? are there any more specific awards and recognitions for the relevant practice area, besides the usual Chambers/Legal 500 rankings? when taken together with other strong practice areas of the firm, are there significant cross-selling opportunities? When you start researching all of these questions, you will find that although initially two practices might have looked very similar because they had the same Chambers band ranking, they have many features that can differentiate them. Once you identify those, you can consider why those more specific features could be of benefit you/be of interest. This way, you can eventually end up with a truly unique practice-area based USP.
To give you a more concrete example - when I was applying to
Davis Polk, I saw they had a band 5 Chambers UK corporate M&A ranking. Initially, I thought it would be difficult to write a persuasive USP based on that, as there were other firms with higher corporate M&A Chambers UK rankings. However, upon further research, I found out that (i)
Davis Polk had s significantly smaller corporate M&A practice than any of the other ranked firms - with less than 1/3 of the total number of practitioners than similarly ranked firms; (ii)
Davis Polk was ranked as the most efficient corporate practice in the UK, with the highest Revenue Per Lawyer (RPL) and Revenue Per Partner (RPP) of any firm; (iii)
Davis Polk globally had the highest average corporate deal value of any firm - suggesting a low volume/high value model; (iv)
Davis Polk had won various corporate/PE deal of the year or team of the year awards. When taking all these factors together, it was easy to think of an USP in terms of
Davis Polk a small but extremely high quality practice, which I could then connect to my motivations to be a become a great corporate lawyer and to work in small teams.
