• Home
  • About
    • Our Team
    • Community Involvement
    • Mission and Values
    • PRecision Curriculum
  • Services
    • Public Relations
    • Content
    • Chambers Law Firm Rankings
    • Crisis & Litigation PR
    • Supreme Court Litigation
    • Media Training
    • Digital
    • Video
    • Poston Programs and Webinars
    • Podcasts
    • Public Affairs
    • CEO and Executive Leadership Communications
    • Internal and Employee Communications
  • Industries
    • Legal
    • Financial Services
    • Real Estate
    • Health Care
    • Architecture, Engineering and Construction
    • Associations & Professional Societies
    • Other Professional Services
  • Results
  • Blog
  • Careers
    • Openings
    • PRecision Curriculum
  • Contact
  • Search
  • Home
  • About
    • Our Team
    • Community Involvement
    • Mission and Values
    • PRecision Curriculum
  • Services
    • Public Relations
    • Content
    • Chambers Law Firm Rankings
    • Crisis & Litigation PR
    • Supreme Court Litigation
    • Media Training
    • Digital
    • Video
    • Poston Programs and Webinars
    • Podcasts
    • Public Affairs
    • CEO and Executive Leadership Communications
    • Internal and Employee Communications
  • Industries
    • Legal
    • Financial Services
    • Real Estate
    • Health Care
    • Architecture, Engineering and Construction
    • Associations & Professional Societies
    • Other Professional Services
  • Results
  • Blog
  • Careers
    • Openings
    • PRecision Curriculum
  • Contact
  • Search

Everything Legal Professionals Need to Know about Chambers USA

  • Posted by Poston Communications
  • On September 12, 2018
  • Chambers, Chambers law firm rankings, Chambers submissions, Chambers USA, legal marketing, Legal Marketing Association

Share This...

To all our legal professionals out there: Are Chambers submissions keeping you up at night? We have eight insider tips directly from Laura Mills, the former Chambers USA editor, to help make your submission process more efficient and effective.

Mills spent 10 years at Chambers and Partners, which identifies and ranks the most outstanding law firms and lawyers in more than 180 jurisdictions throughout the world. Based in London, she moved up from researcher to deputy editor to editor of the U.S. edition before leaving in April 2017. She joined the Atlanta chapter of the Legal Marketing Association (LMA) in August to answer many of the questions legal professionals have when going through the Chambers submission process. Here are Mills’ recommendations:

  1. No shortcuts. Getting ranked, or rising in the rankings, takes a multiyear campaign. In most cases, a firm or individual will start in the lowest national ranking or state ranking. Editors always look at the previous year’s submission and compare it to the current submission. They may go back three or four years. Write the current submission knowing you need to show growth in the practice and avoid fudging on matters by recycling what was submitted last year.
  2. Manage expectations. Have realistic expectations for firms not currently ranked. Look at the current rankings and compare how your firm stacks up. Talk to the editor of that section for a candid assessment. A firm needs to satisfy metrics to get attention – value of matters, number of lawyers, visibility and importance of the work. A firm building a practice may be doing great work for clients, but Chambers won’t consider a practice that doesn’t have a substantial track record over a period of years.
  3. Don’t waste your time. The narrative portions of the submission – what the firm does well, feedback on your firm and competitors – are important, but the sine qua non is matters and client references. If you can’t show strength in these sections, you are not going anywhere. Additionally, do not spin your wheels on individual bios and precise headcount calculations. Longer submissions are not necessarily better. Stay within the template because you will be docked if you turn a one-page template into two or three pages.
  4. Strategize client references. Because of the weight that client references have, calculate a strategy around selecting and preparing references starting with encouraging clients to respond to Chambers. Client feedback is essential and if they don’t return calls, it will severely handicap your submission. Some clients are going to be more articulate and persuasive in their feedback, and it matters. So be sure to put forward your best resources.
  5. Not all references are equal. Chambers evaluates a firm’s references this way:
  • Super clients – Clients who are listed on many submissions by multiple firms. Researchers call these references first because they are in the best position to compare firms. Everything being equal, these clients will carry the most weight because of their broad knowledge of the legal marketplace.
  • Second tier – Clients listed on about a dozen submissions.
  • Third tier – Clients listed on fewer than a dozen submissions.
  1. About matters. Matters should be presented in the submission form in their order of importance. Transactional matters are judged primarily on their dollar value. The form has space for 10 publishable and 10 confidential matters. You can alter the ratio – 18 confidential and two publishable, for example – as long as the total doesn’t exceed 20. Confidential matters are given the same weight as publishable matters.
  2. Take advantage of feedback. Chambers editors will give free feedback twice a year per firm on up to seven specific questions. Additionally, any firm serious about moving up in the rankings should purchase the Chambers Unpublished report on their firm. The standard version has all the anonymous comments collected by the researchers, plus analysis. The premium version has a comparative analysis to competitors. The reports are expensive but very useful in analyzing where a firm needs to shore up its submission.
  3. Build relationships. Researchers will talk to you during the submission period but avoid the temptation to fill the call with everyone around the table. They prefer to talk to one person. Calls won’t be returned promptly – a week or two later is not unusual – but researchers are willing to talk to you. Firms should develop a long-term strategy of building a relationship with the researchers and editors.

[ MORE: Chambers USA Announces 2018 Guide to Top Lawyers and Law Firms, 2019 Research Schedule ]

Poston Communication’s Content Team has prepared successful Chambers submissions for international, national and mid-market firms in a variety of practice areas. Please contact us if we can be of assistance with your Chambers submission.

0 Comments

Recent Posts
  • Poston Adds Award Winning PR Professional to Growing Team
  • House of Content Horrors: Content Writing That Will “Scare” Off Your SEO
  • House of Content Horrors: Five “Deadliest” Legal Marketing Content Boo-Boos
  • House of Content Horrors: The Spooky Font that Haunts Our Nightmares – Hellvetica
  • How to Create Social Media Content in Support of Your Business Goals
Archives
  • December 2022
  • October 2022
  • September 2022
  • August 2022
  • July 2022
  • June 2022
  • May 2022
  • April 2022
  • March 2022
  • January 2022
  • December 2021
  • November 2021
  • October 2021
  • September 2021
  • August 2021
  • July 2021
  • June 2021
  • May 2021
  • April 2021
  • February 2021
  • January 2021
  • December 2020
  • November 2020
  • October 2020
  • September 2020
  • August 2020
  • July 2020
  • June 2020
  • May 2020
  • April 2020
  • March 2020
  • February 2020
  • November 2019
  • October 2019
  • September 2019
  • August 2019
  • July 2019
  • June 2019
  • May 2019
  • April 2019
  • March 2019
  • February 2019
  • January 2019
  • December 2018
  • November 2018
  • October 2018
  • September 2018
  • August 2018
  • July 2018
  • May 2018
  • April 2018
  • March 2018
  • February 2018
  • January 2018
  • November 2017
  • September 2017
  • July 2017
  • May 2017
  • April 2017
  • March 2017
  • February 2017
  • October 2016
  • August 2016
  • July 2016
  • June 2016
  • April 2016

Make Your PR Pitch a Success with 4 Tips from Media at PRSA Georgia Pitch Tank

Previous thumb

Legal Marketers Coming to Greenville, South Carolina, for LMASE18

Next thumb
Scroll

What We Do

  • Services
  • Industries
  • Results
  • Blog

Who We Are

  • Our Team
  • Community Involvement
  • Mission and Values

Poston Communications is a public relations agency focused on professional services companies including law, accounting, architecture, associations, construction, engineering, financial services, health care, human resources, interior design, investment banking, management consulting, real estate, recruiting, technology and venture capital.

404-875-3400 | [email protected]

  • Sitemap
  • Terms of Service
  • Privacy Policy

©2022 Poston Communications LLC - All rights reserved