How we secured both a Chambers and Legal 500 ranking for a first-time submission

The legal directory challenges

While first-time submissions to the prestigious Chambers and Legal 500 directories can get ranked, it usually takes 2 to 3 years of consistent submissions that show evidence of a growing practice to get a department ranking.

This is especially true if the ranking table in question is 'competitive'.

So, when we were engaged by a relatively new boutique employment practice in London to prepare their submissions for both Chambers and Legal 500 to a competitive ranking table, we were careful to stress this point.

Our directory submission approach

We structured our work with the client into three key phases:

Phase 1: Set the directory submission strategy

We knew that this firm would not struggle to reach 20 work highlights and referees, and so our strategic edge would be in selecting the right mix of referees, and matters that showed both complexity and broad scope.

We began with a SWOT analysis of the Chambers and Legal 500 table for this Employment category, identifying the potential strengths (and gaps) their ranked competitors might be showing in their submissions, and mapping them against the Practice Area definitions. Firms with a broad range of employment work were rewarded, as well as those showing cross-sector expertise, particularly in high-value sectors such as financial services and tech.

Phase 2: Build the directory submission

Our approach was to show that the firm was working on high-value, complex matters across as wide a range of sectors as possible. While they had undeniable strengths in certain types of work, and could have filled up the 20 matter spaces only with those, we needed to fulfill the 'scope of matters' requirement in order to get the best chance of a ranking.

From our strategy in Phase 1, we advised the client that it would be good to switch out some of the stronger matters for perceived weaker matters that showcased experience in niche sectors, as well as for different types of employment work, such as team moves. While some of these were more routine matters on paper, we worked with the partners to add complexities into the work highlight.

Our strategy for referee selection was to work backwards from a target 35-40% referee response rate that we see in our experience of ranked submissions. This task was made more difficult given this was a first-time submission, with no prior referee response data for this firm for us to benchmark against. While you can never predict how many referees will respond to feedback requests from the legal directories, we advised the client that it would be good to include a mix of both senior and junior referees to maximise the response rate.

The conversion from the Chambers to Legal 500 submission wasn't a usual like-for-like conversion. One of the differentiators between Chambers and Legal 500 submissions is that, for first-time submissions, Legal 500 allows you to include matters from within a two-year window, as long as at least 10 of your matters are new. This meant that we had an even broader range of potential matters to consider in the converted Legal 500 submission, which meant even tougher decisions about which matters to cut.

Phase 3: Securing a researcher interview

The legal directories see 1000s of submissions every year, and can't interview every partner or department head. We knew that given this would be the first time either Chambers or Legal 500 would be encountering this firm, it was especially important to help the team secure a researcher interview to give a more well-rounded view of the practice.