Chambers Season is Here. Is Your Law Firm Prepared?  

It is officially summer and the kickoff to Chambers season! Long summer weekends are great, but long days for legal professionals can be stressful as things heat up with Chambers and Partners ranking submission deadlines pending now through the end of the year.

To smooth the process, our Poston Content team has compiled the following list of best practices and insider tips for successful Chambers submissions:

• Manage expectations from the beginning. Often law firms have unrealistic expectations of being ranked for the first time, or if already ranked, to move up in bands. It’s a multiyear investment of time.
• Don’t underestimate how long putting together a Chambers submission takes. It’s important to set internal deadlines and put a process in place. Always leave time to proof and edit the final submission, as this usually takes longer than anticipated.
• Follow the provided templates. Longer submissions are not necessarily better. We recommend staying within the template, because you will be docked if you turn a one-page submission into two or three pages.
• Identify client referees (references) based on who you feel will take the time to do the interview to provide meaningful feedback. Sometimes the general counsel or chief legal officer may not be the best choice if he or she does not have time to participate. Our team also can work with you to adequately prepare your clients to participate.
• Identify key differentiators for your firm’s practice areas. These should include your firm’s most noteworthy and significant cases.
• Show growth in your practice. Recycle the information you worked so hard to pull together in other ways, such as representative matters for your website, RFPs, other award nominations or previous Chambers submissions.
• Develop a long-term relationship with Chambers’ researchers and editors. They provide free feedback twice a year per firm on up to seven specific questions. Any firm serious about moving up in the rankings should purchase the Chambers Unpublished report on their firm. The reports are expensive but very useful in analyzing where a firm needs to shape up its submission.

Poston Content has prepared successful submissions for international, national and mid-market firms in a variety of practice areas. Professionalism and experience matter, and we provide support and guidance throughout the process. We work with law firms from the initial interviews with our writers through the collection of deals, matters and referees that underscore the firm’s leadership.

While we can’t guarantee a ranking, we can ensure that your firm makes the strongest case possible based on the work you have done in the past year. By allowing our team to take this project off your plate, you can focus on bottom-line efforts while we tackle the submission with our streamlined and process-oriented approach.

Contact Monica Smith today for more information at [email protected] or (404) 875-3400.

Kali Hammond is an account supervisor at Poston Communications, based in Orlando.