A new look-ahead (LA) scheme, distributed lookahead (DLA), is proposed for pipelined implementation of recursive digital filters. It is established that, in the case of many recursive filters, DLA can provide equivalent and stable implementation with reduced multiplication and latch complexities, higher area-efficiency. It also produces outputs with reduced delays, when compared with some existing LA schemes. Stability regions for the proposed scheme are also well defined. Next, a time-domain approximation method is proposed for direct design of pipelined recursive filters that can achieve superior match with reduced pipelined filter orders.