Reviewing the last submission cycle

Our first recommendation is to hold a review of your previous submissions process. Now is the time to look over at things that did or did not work well over 2025. Given the volume of submissions and numerous deadlines through the year, staying organised across the whole cycle and meeting deadlines is vital to ensure that there are not any knock-on effects to submissions that are next due.

• How easy was it to gather and organise all the necessary information? How strong is your process in adapting the information into the various submission templates?
• Was partner approval a straightforward process? Can this process be meaningfully streamlined Ideally for the partners, their input should be made as efficient as possible so they are not spending more time than necessary.
• Were deadlines met? Did you experience any significant delays in a particular submission, and did this affect any other submissions? Could more time be afforded to any submissions that proved a problem?
• How are your team’s rankings performing vs your targets?

Hold a session to break down the rankings and note where the improvements were. Don’t forget to celebrate your successes as much as identifying things to improve!

Prioritising submissions

Thinking ahead to when the submissions cycle fully kicks into gear in early 2026, a crucial question to ask yourself is what resources you have available, and therefore how many submissions you can dedicate to.

One strategy is to consider which directories you would like to prioritise. Many firms try to submit to as many directories as possible, but it is an equally valid strategy to opt for fewer directories and instead focus your efforts on a few high-quality submissions. Alternatively, for directories that are less of a priority, it may be more efficient to just adapt that submission from another that you have worked on in more detail.

There is also the question of whether your firm has broken into a ranking table that you have submitted to, or even if you have ever submitted to that area before. Submitting to a new area will require working completely from scratch, which will likely take more time than an established submission.

You may also wish to pay extra attention to rankings where you believe the firm is under ranked. If for example you have a new practice area with a young team, it is unlikely you will be ranked in the very first cycle. Your goal this year is instead to to start building your reputation in that area with the directories and lay the groundwork for a ranking in the near future.

Reviewing key market trends and competitive analysis

In order to develop a strategy to get yourself noted in the rankings, we would recommend taking a review for each of your submissions on what were the key market trends in that practice. The directories monitor what is going on in the markets and weight their rankings towards types of work
that have been particularly strong that year.

Therefore, consider what has recently dominated your particular market, and then think about to what extent your practice has been part of that trend. When it comes to the submission, you can then align matters to those trends. This will help to demonstrate that your firm is top of the market and that you’re actually part of the trend, not just chasing it.

Another approach we would recommend at this stage is a comparative analysis with your targets vs where similar firms are ranked. For example, seeing how competitors fare in the rankings, looking at their editorial provided by the directories and how that writeup fits with market trends. The editorial that competitors receive should help to give you an idea about why they have succeeded in achieving a high ranking by detailing their main areas of focus. This is a great approach that our team members with BD experience really recommend.

Preparing to select matters

You can also prepare by starting to gather the necessary information for submissions next year. The best place to start is your previous submission document. We often describe submissions as ‘living’ documents: they are rarely rewritten from scratch every year, but instead are often adapted, updated and honed over time.

Given the number of submissions that are made for a single practice area over a year, it is advisable to start with your previous draft and including new information from there. Remember that matters that have completed 12 months before the submission deadline should now be replaced with newer work. For matters that are ongoing, they can still be included but they should be updated to discuss the most recent developments (they should not just be directly cut from the last submission.)

It may be that you already have a number of new matters that you’re considering for your next submission. When selecting matters, the golden rule is to keep it simple and just select the most impressive, most significant work that your team has acted on. Beyond that rule, the lawyers that you would like to showcase in the submission should all have a strong presence in the work highlights. Partners that you would like to see ranked should be appearing on at least 2-3 matters.

The other main issue to consider is how best to present your team’s strengths as a whole. If the firm is well known for a very particular area of work within that practice area, then the submission should reflect that, as long as you are still keeping space for other types of work to prove the full extent of your practice.

Capturing data

For every matter you are considering for submissions, make sure you have all of the following information on this checklist:

• A description of the matter, including:
  • A brief summary of the matter
  • What the team worked on specifically
  • Why this matter is important
• The client’s name
• The value of the matter
• The team members that acted on the matter
• The date the matter closed or if it is ongoing
• Other law firms that acted on the matter and their role

Capturing this data alongside press releases is often a good approach, because those releases typically contain much of the necessary information. We would also suggest that if a matter could be included in more than one submission, this should be clearly noted now as it will make building your submissions much easier.

In situations where any of the information you need is currently missing, we would recommend making a note of what will need to be added when it comes to writing the submission in full. While it is possible to quickly contact a partner to confirm, we find that it can be very easy to end up in unnecessary back- and-forth correspondence over fine detail, which can be a problem if that partners’ time is limited.

Partner involvement and approval

Speaking of partner involvement, it’s important to consider how to get the most out of the lawyers’ time when working on a particular submission. There are a few ways to make efficiencies in the time needed for partners to review and approve a submission document. Details that usually require help from partners include:

• Adding missing information
• Checking confidentiality of a certain matter
• Selecting particular matters to include

To avoid lengthy correspondence across the team on these matters, we would recommend noting these issues for now so that when it’s time to drafting the submission, they can all be addressed simultaneously. This will allow partners to tackle all these issues at the same time and make their task of knowing what to add much easier.

In submissions for big departments where several lawyers are involved, nominating one partner who is interested in the directories process and giving them full authority to approve that submission could be the best course of action.

In submissions where handling confidential information is a greater concern, now is also the time to seek permission from that client to include them. Getting these matters cleared now will considerably speed up the process of writing submissions later down the line. This is also a good time to ask clients for permission over whether they can be included as referees.

Submission deadlines and building a schedule

Finally, now is the time to build a schedule of deadlines so that you are prepared with the right resources at the right time.

The directories generally launch their guides and set deadlines at around the same time of the year, though we would note that the exact deadlines are usually confirmed 1-2 months in advance and they can be subject to change. We would recommend setting regular reminders so that you can confirm what the exact deadlines are and to commence work for those submissions.

Conclusion

To summarise all our key tips, the key tasks to complete now are:

• Review your process from last year to identify successes and improvements.
• Decide what to submit, and which submissions to prioritise.
• Capture as much data as you can, and identify where you will need more information.
• Seek client’s permission to include their work or act as referees.
• Build a schedule based on rough deadlines.

For each submission, keep thinking about your core strategy: what are your goals, how does this compare to other firms, which lawyers do you want to highlight and how does your work fit into the year’s trends? With all of these ideas in mind, you will be well placed to succeed.

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If you’ve found this article insighful, you might want to read Laurence’s latest article Trends in directories: What is changing and what to look out for by clicking here.

The post How to prepare for the next directories cycle appeared first on Tier One Rankings.

The current landscape

The directories space continues to be dominated by the biggest groups, Chambers and Partners and Legal 500. A few other directories such as IFLR1000 are also prominent, as are some specialist directories covering particular areas such as Benchmark Litigation for Disputes, IP Stars for IP and WTR for tax.

Outside of this group, there are many other organisations that assess law firms, and the last few years have seen a major increase in their numbers. It should be noted however that very few of these new organisations are considered to be reputable. Many of these are described as “pay-to-play”, wherein law firms can buy products in order to improve their chances of being ranked by that directory. These rankings are therefore not considered to have much integrity. The larger directories know that they trade entirely on their reputation of being fair and equitable in their rankings, hence they are more reliable.

Growth of private equity

That said, the larger directories are starting to change their approach to their own rankings, particularly in how best to commercialise their data, engage with law firms and create new products. This increased focus on the commercial arm is largely driven by the fact that a number of the big directories are now owned by private equity. Chambers and Partners was first bought out in 2018 by the PE firm Inflexion, and in 2023 was sold on to Abry Partners- at this sale, Chambers was valued at over £400 million. Meanwhile, earlier this year, IFLR’s parent group Legal Benchmarking was bought out by Triple Private Equity in a similar deal.

In light of the value that is now placed on these companies, the directories have been bolstering their commercial arms to support these products, and sales groups within the key rankings are increasingly getting in touch with firms of their own accord, independently of the research process.

The directories understand that they have a certain tightrope to walk between maintaining the integrity of their rankings and commercial pursuits. They are fully aware that the independence and impartiality of their process is the absolute core of their business; nonetheless, these are businesses, and they are therefore exploring what they can do to maximise their commercial potential whilst also maintaining that integrity.

Directory expansion

As part of the directories’ drive for growth, as well as their goal to produce more comprehensive content, the rankings themselves are continually expanding. The main drive for this expansion is in new ranking tables as their coverage of legal markets deepens and researchers begin to look at new practice areas that are fast developing. For example, the most recent Chambers Europe 2025 guide introduced 17 new ranking tables across 7 key jurisdictions.

The ranking tables themselves have also grown, with more law firms now being recognised on average per practice area than previously. There is therefore an increasing opportunity for firms to achieve a ranking where previously they may have been overlooked. The particular beneficiaries are smaller law firms, those that have been founded more recently, and boutiques who have a very particular area of expertise. One example of this development in Chambers USA guide is known as USA Spotlight, which looks to award recognition to these kinds of smaller law firms in certain states.

They have also sought to release new products making use of the existing data they collect. For example, in the last month Chambers have rolled out a new product called Market Pulse, a tool which makes use of all the commentary the company receives about recent market trends, and identifies what the market considers to be the most pressing issues.

Changes in products: Profiles

Alongside expanding the rankings themselves, the directories are also interested in finding sources of revenue connected to their rankings and are increasingly inviting firms to engage with products relating to the rankings process. For example, one of the major sources of revenue for directories has always been the profile, where a firm can add information about themselves on the directories website.

However recent changes to try and improve the efficacy of the profiles have included displaying law firms with a profile more prominently in the list of rankings, as well as allowing you to post editorial directly to social media.

Changes in products: Expansion of Insight/Research+

Another longstanding tool that is seeing great expansions are the directories’ reports about their ranking decisions. At Chambers these are called Insight reports, whereas Legal 500 refers to them as Research+.

When they were first introduced, these reports were fairly simple breakdowns of the information that the researchers received and the logic behind their ranking decisions. Over the last five years however, these reports have become much more detailed in the information they offer.

Newer features they provide include historical ranking data, numerical ratings for the firm’s performance in key metrics, and comparative data which shows how a team is performing versus closely competing law firms. Legal 500 for example now produces an array of these reports with slightly different areas, such as submission analysis documents and Client satisfaction KPI reports. They have therefore become better value and can be more useful for marketing teams than previously.

Changes in products: Research Management Tool

Another key product that Chambers released a few years ago is the Research Management Tool, which has had a dramatic effect on the research process and the ability of the firms to keep control of the process. Legal 500 have announced that they are introducing a similar tool as part of their Premium subscription.

These tools keep track of the referee process during active research, flagging if somebody
has not responded or there has been an issue with contacting them. Many ranking decisions can come down to whether there is sufficient information to promote, so using this tool can make the difference.

AI

The question of AI and how the directories will use them is also an ongoing issue. So far, the directories have taken a cautious approach to adopting these new technologies internally. As it stands, research remains very labour intensive, backed by large teams (Legal 500 has approximately 50 researchers, whilst Chambers has over 200.)

This is something that may change in future, and no doubt they will be considering how best to use new technology to improve their process. We are keeping an eye out for any potential changes and will send out updates if so.

Continuity in ranking methodology

As much as these changes have significantly altered the approach of the directories and their relationships with law firms, there is a major continuity that should be noted, and that is their core methodology of the rankings. Each directory has a slightly different approach and they have been tried and tested. For example, Chambers places particular emphasis on the feedback they receive from sources, whilst Legal500 primarily focuses on the work evidence provided.

These methodologies have remained steady almost since they were founded over 30 years ago, and whilst the approach around this method may change, it is unlikely that the core process will see any significant transformation.

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If you liked this article, you might be interested reading Laurence’s latest article on How to prepare for the next directories cycle available here.

The post Trends in directories: What is changing and what to look out for appeared first on Tier One Rankings.

Spotlight Expands to New States and Firms

The Chambers Spotlight initiative, designed to highlight small and midsize firms, expanded its scope significantly in 2025. The program introduced rankings for Ohio, Illinois, and California, bringing the total to 888 firms ranked across 40 practice areas in seven states.

According to Chambers, the Spotlight ranking table received 21,000 views last year, suggesting increased interest in regional legal markets. New rankings for Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Georgia are expected to be published within the next six months.

Introduction of Market Pulse 

Chambers also launched Market Pulse, a new research product aimed at business development teams. Powered by 200,000 data points from law firm clients, it provides insights into regional trends and external factors shaping demand for legal services.

Major Trends

Among the key themes identified this year were:

• Growing client concern over an uncertain regulatory environment
• Ongoing economic volatility
• Increased demand for legal advice in specialized areas, such as tariff regimes and alternative fund structures

Debut Rankings for AI and Space Law

Chambers introduced two new practice area rankings in 2025: Artificial Intelligence and Space Law.

Chambers’ new AI Law ranking reflects growing client demand for legal advice on AI development, regulation, and disputes. While adoption varies, interest in internal tools and global compliance is rising. Despite cost and implementation hurdles, firms recognize AI’s long-term value.

The Space Law ranking highlights the surge in legal work around commercial space ventures, like private stations and space mining, as the ISS nears retirement. Legal needs are outpacing regulation, and only a few lawyers have the niche expertise required—making them highly sought after.

Legal Spend, Pricing Models, and Fee Sensitivity

The 2025 research also focused on how clients select external legal counsel. One recurring theme was cost sensitivity. Chambers reported that rack rates increased by approximately 9% in the first quarter of the year.

In-house counsel interviewed by Chambers indicated that the combination of rising fees and economic instability is leading them to seek alternatives to hourly billing. There is greater openness to:

• Alternative Fee Arrangements (AFAs)
• Outcome-based billing
• Blended rates for routine legal tasks

Clients also reported a growing emphasis on efficiency and innovation in service delivery, with many turning to legal providers who demonstrate strong technology integration and less reliance on labor-intensive processes.

Evolving Client Relationships

Clients now value deeper, long-term partnerships—especially through secondments, which help with both cost control and stronger collaboration. Firms that use shared tech, work closely with in-house teams, and go beyond basic legal work are preferred.

The focus is shifting from just legal advice to a full client experience, where innovation, flexibility, and teamwork are just as important as legal skills.

Firms that embrace this approach are more likely to attract and keep top-tier clients in today’s competitive, cost-conscious market.

Key resources

The first submission deadline is July 10th, 2025. The full research scedule can be found here.

The full list of research coverage can be found here

Research for the Chambers USA 2026 Guide will begin in August this year.

The post Chambers USA 2025 Webinar – Key Takeaways appeared first on Tier One Rankings.

There can be times however when a researcher struggles to get in touch with a particular referee. Their emails may bounce or be caught in spam filters for example, or their contact details may not be updated- sometimes an email can just be missed by that referee. To help ensure that your firm is getting as much feedback as possible, this is what we recommend if you experience any issues:

• When research begins, notify all of your referees to expect emails from Chambers. (The research schedule will note when it begins and can be found here: https://chambers.com/about-us/research-schedule/ ) Chambers will always get in touch by email first, either with a survey or an invitation to a phone interview.
• If you have access to the Research Management Tool, you can check it regularly to update on progress. If there are particular problems with a certain referee, the RMT will flag them and offer advice on what to do.
• If a referee has been flagged as ‘Unsubscribed’ by the RMT, this means that referee has signified to Chambers that they do not want to receive any of their correspondence, in which case a researcher will not reach out to them. This can be remedied by forwarding written consent from the referee to the researcher. They can then get in touch with that referee as normal.
• If a referee notes that they have not received Chambers’ correspondence, we do not recommend just asking the researcher to send another email. It will likely be an ineffective approach, because any further emails could suffer from the same issue that the first one did (whatever that issue may be, eg spam filter, bouncing back or being accidentally missed.)
• Instead, we would recommend that around one week after research starts, follow up with referees encouraging them to respond to the Chambers researcher. Your email should note that if they have not heard from Chambers, they can reach out to the researcher directly providing their feedback about the firm and lawyers. You can also include the researcher’s email address in this reminder.
• To save time and back and forth, the referee can just put their thoughts into an email and send it straight to the researcher- alternatively, they can get in touch and ask the researcher for a questionnaire.
• Research typically closes around 4 weeks after it begins, so all feedback should be sent in by then (larger sections may have longer research windows.)

The post How to handle issues with referees during Chambers research appeared first on Tier One Rankings.

Perhaps the most common error a Chambers researcher will encounter when reading submissions is where a firm has provided excessive  reams of information. These issues can include too many work highlights, or individual highlights running for multiple pages. Often a lot of this information is impenetrable and goes far too close into the fine technical detail. When determining rankings, researchers typically take ten to fifteen minutes reading and analysing each submission. Therefore, anything that makes it difficult to quickly comprehend the information is often a pet peeve for researchers. The ideal length of a work highlight is one side of A4, which means that the matter description should be around two to three paragraphs. It’s very rare for a matter to genuinely require more space than this.

Providing too little information.

Ironically, this issue is typically the next most common problem with submissions! The submission document is ultimately a balancing act; the document is designed to be a specific length so that a researcher can make a reasoned decision on the quality of that firm in a reasonable amount of time. Whilst matter summaries should be succinct, providing just one or two sentences is likely not enough to fully understand what the matter is about. Furthermore, if a firm is unable to provide 20 work highlights, researchers will likely conclude that it is not acting on enough significant work to warrant a ranking.

Adding extra matters outside of work highlights.

A technique often used by firms to circumvent the limits of the submission document is to group together multiple matters into a single work highlight. For example, grouping any work done for the same client or the same type of work being collated together. Grouping a few related matters together like this is acceptable, but this technique should not be used to abuse the document and filling it up with an excessive number of additional matters. The work highlights should ideally remain just one page of A4. Furthermore, listing additional work in other areas such as lawyer bios or team summary should also be avoided beyond quick headlines.

Getting the wrong focus on certain lawyers.

One of the most challenging aspects of writing a strong submission that achieves a firm’s aims is in providing enough coverage around individual lawyers. As space is limited, it’s common for some lawyers to present more evidence to the disadvantage of others. One effective workaround is to list all lawyers who were involved in each work highlight to give them due credit for the same matter. Lawyers who are already ranked should continue to demonstrate a good stream of work (at least 2-3 work highlights), but when it comes to unranked lawyers, firms should consider who they want to focus on supporting and provide them with the most support both in terms of the submission and the number of referees.

Using hyperbolic language.

Sometimes firms are prone to using superlatives in order to promote some of the work they present (for example, describing a deal as ‘one of the best in the market’ without elaborating on why.) Researchers are trained to look beyond ‘marketing speak’ and just drill down into the facts of the evidence. The evidence that a firm presents should be allowed to speak for itself.

Ignoring or mishandling the feedback section.

Section C2 on the Chambers submission offers firms the opportunity to comment on the existing rankings and how accurate they believe current coverage is. Firms often instead use the space to express frustration about rankings without any constructive feedback. This can instead be used as a chance for a firm to describe why they are underranked and where they believe the current coverage is going wrong, or by drawing comparisons to firms in higher bands. These insights will both get the firm’s point across and provide insight that researchers will find helpful.

Misunderstanding the confidential/publishable format of the submission template.

The standard template on a Chambers submission contains space for both publishable and confidential information in order to allow firms to confidently share any sensitive data without any risk of publication. This template includes 10 publishable matters and 10 confidential, and firms often interpret this as needing to specifically include this number of each. In reality, as much or as little confidential information can be included, and the template can be adapted to include more or fewer sensitive matters.

Mislabelling confidential information.

It’s surprisingly common for the same information in a submission to be variously labelled as publishable or confidential in different parts of the submissions. Matter values, client names and other specific details are often affected by this. Whilst this doesn’t affect ranking decisions, it is significant in writing editorial, as researchers will not include information that is at any point labelled as confidential.

Bios.

It’s common for lawyers to cut and paste their bios directly into this space, when a link to their website will provide the same information. The bio space is best used to provide a very brief summary of what that lawyer’s particular strengths are and a few headline achievements.

Quoting rankings in other directories as evidence.

Chambers does acknowledge data from third parties such as press releases or data from Mergermarket. However, notes about rankings in other directories are usually disregarded by researchers. The methodology of directories varies slightly, so it should be anticipated that they produce slightly different results.

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