Increase Your Legal 500/Chambers Promotion Odds

Improving your firm's Legal 500/Chambers rankings is a three-pronged process, consisting of a strong submission, coordinated referee management and a well-prepped, insightful research interview.

Before even starting your application, you need to understand the key criteria, which I have detailed here.

Starting with the submission, here's my pointers on how to optimise each section of the Legal 500/Chambers document:

· Your Practice/What is Your Department Best Known For – Use this section to succinctly relay your key tangible strengths as a practice i.e., the types of matters you are reputed for, your key industries of expertise, your cross-border capabilities and the consistency of your client roster. I would also recommend having a section labelled 'What's New' where you address new arrivals, standout new clients and trends in your workload. This section can be kept simple.

Far, far too many firms would write thousands of words here without relaying this essential information. Focusing on subjective content such as the level of client service (which is gauged via referee feedback as opposed to the submission) is not the way to go, nor is diving straight into the rankings introducing your practice at a general level.

· Rankings Feedback – Firms need to avoid generic and cliched commentary, as I can assure you all of your competitors will be making the same points. There is no point simply writing ‘We should be in Tier 1 as we handle the biggest work, act for the largest clients, field the biggest team and only act against the top tier firms’ - this is basically how 95% of completed rankings feedback sections appear.

You need to elaborate on each of these points, with reference to how they are proven by the contents of the submission.

Showing, and not merely telling, is the key. You cannot expect the researcher to account for intangible arguments which are not proven within the submission.

To give you an idea of what I mean by this, let's take the claim about 'acting for the largest clients'. Why not list your standout names and briefly explain why they are a big deal? What's their annual revenue, market cap, number of employees, number of jurisdictions served? Any one of these anecdotal statistics can succinctly prove that your clients are significant, and make your claim of an excellent client base far more tangible.

I was once able to make the argument, on behalf of a client, that all of the publicly listed clients in the submission had market caps of at least $500m. For another firm, I pointed out that the submission contained work for 5 of the 6 biggest banks within their jurisdiction. Evidence-based arguments such as these will resonate far more than broad, sweeping claims with no elaboration.

· Work Highlights – This is absolutely essential, both L500 and Chambers assess you on the quality and breadth of your work. Firms fall into the habit of writing just a sentence or two per matter, which is never going to sufficiently relay the significance/scale/complexity of your work.

You do not need to write an endless number of paragraphs though a good level of detail, at least enough to provide the researcher with clear context/understanding of the matter, is the key to any successful submission.

It is also essential that you include matter values where possible. I can assure you, research is not as simplistic as adding up matter values though these are extremely important, especially for transactional tables. E.G if you are handling M&A deals in the $20m+ range, and everyone else in your tier is in the $10-15m bracket, this is an obvious point of distinction which will not be relayed unless you disclose your values.

While it is true that there is not an automatic correlation between value and complexity, it is a fairly ringing endorsement if large entities are turning to your firm for high-value, business critical matters.

Also ensure that you provide enough work. Based on my experience, it is extremely difficult to obtain a ranking or promotion with less than 15 matters. Ideally, you should be sending over the full 20.

At Legal 500, I recall several firms complaining that ‘the focus should be on quality, not quantity’. My answer to this is that 20 matters allow Legal 500 and Chambers to assess the consistency and scope of your work, both of which are crucial criteria, and cannot be accurately gauged with just a handful of matters.

Case in point - I covered several tables where Tier 2 submissions would start off with 5 or so real standout matters, though this quality would quickly drop off, in stark contrast to the Tier 1 firms whose work remained market leading throughout. Firms aiming for a promotion, especially to one of the top tiers, need to consider the overall quality of their work highlights and not just hone their focus on 5 standout matters.

For a full breakdown on how to write your work highlights, please see here.

· Lawyer Bios - These are your chance to show the breadth and depth of your team. Aside from the obvious, which is to focus on the individual's key fields of expertise, you need to ask yourself 'what makes them an authority/leader in this space?'. Are there any external awards or recognition you can refer to? Any examples of conference appearances? Publications? Lecturing etc? What about their track record, are they any flagship historical matters you can briefly detail to show that they have a proven history of working at a high level over a number of years?

Moving away from the submission:

· Referee Feedback – You want to use referees who will actually have the time to respond, and do so with a good level of detail. There is no point listing the CEO of a prestigious Fortune 500 company if they will be too busy to respond to the directories.

I would also recommend shortlisting referees who are knowledgeable of the market and can make points of comparison between your firm and others.

You need to keep on top of your referees as far too many of them simply ignore Legal 500 and Chambers. Effective referee management, which includes encouraging them before and during the research period, goes a long way to achieving more responses.

That said, it is important to not prioritise referee feedback at the expense of a strong submission. The most common misconception I used to hear at Legal 500 was ‘You guys mainly base it on referee feedback, right?’. WRONG. Chambers places far more weighting on referee feedback than Legal 500 though for both the main criteria is the contents of the submission.

This is a dangerous assumption as it leads to firms completing half-baked submissions in the expectation that they are not truly important. At Legal 500, I saw 100s of firms with little to no referee feedback promoted yet not a single name move up on the basis of referee feedback alone. Getting your submission right should be your first and foremost priority.

Finally, post-submission, you need to make sure that you make the most of your Research Interview - for which I have written a separate guide here.

Feel free to email me with any questions you may have in relation to this topic.