On a rankings publication day, it is quite common for BD to receive multiple internal enquiries about the results (especially within larger international firms), while they are already busy preparing the report for circulation. The following are what you can do to in advance to make your internal communications more efficient.
Chambers Europe 2022 rankings will be released this Thursday (17 March). The guide currently covers 52 jurisdictions, which means if you have a regional role in a firm with significant presence in Europe, it is likely that you will be getting quite a lot of questions (often identical ones) from colleagues in various offices. To save your time on the day, we have the following suggestions:
1. Prepare the rankings report in advance
Since about two years ago, Chambers has allowed law firms with profiles to view the advance rankings — not only which practices/lawyers are ranked, but the exact rankings as well. You are able to view it once you receive a sales email from the Chambers profile team asking you to purchase a plaque/certificate for the ranked lawyers. You may also log in to your Chambers account about a month before the publication day to check if the rankings are available. Then you may take your time to prepare the report, and click ‘send’ once Chambers has announced the release.
Even if your firm doesn’t have a profile, you are still able to see the ranked practice areas/lawyers — you may compare the new/lost rankings compared with the year before and prepare the skeleton of the report. That could save hours on the publication day.
2. Prepare the rankings communications in advance
You want to publicise your firm’s achievement as soon as possible, but official communications require sign-off, sometimes by multiple individuals in different offices/time zones. Have you ever felt frustrated that you wanted to post something on LinkedIn/share an intranet story but you didn’t get the sign-off until days later when most of your competitors have already posted their “congratulations”? If you have done Step 1 above and get the report/skeleton email signed off in advance, you only need to insert the number on the day and should be able to get things ready quickly. Preparing these communications in advance also helps in case the relevant people are on leave and cannot sign off the text on the actual day.
3. Appeal to Chambers in advance
Ideally when you spot a lawyer has lost their ranking in the advance ranking page, you should first speak with the research team to find out the reasons and try all you can to have them reinstate the lawyer’s ranking before the results are officially published. You may prepare a (strong) summary of the lawyer’s activities in the past year to back up your ask. Try hard at this stage because after the lawyer is de-ranked, it’s likely that they won’t be ranked again in the following year, at least not immediately. We successfully helped lawyers reinstate rankings at this stage before so we know it might work.
4. Prepare the de-ranked lawyers in advance
At the above stage the lawyer should be notified already so they could work with you on the appeal. If for any reason you did not do the above step, or it does not work, you may still let the lawyer know in advance so they are psychologically prepared and won’t be too surprised on the actual day (it also saves them from checking the rankings with their colleagues/dates and the embarrassment that comes with it!)
5. Download the current rankings in advance
Have you ever tried to compare your rankings against the previous years’ or against your competitors over the past few years, only to find that you don’t have enough information and you can’t access them from Chambers’ website anymore? Once new rankings are released, previous years’ are no longer available, that’s why it’s always helpful to download the pdf file of the existing rankings available on Chambers’ website. The information is also sometimes required in pitches by certain companies who ask you to produce proof of your rankings— and your own firm reports don’t count.
Hope you find the above helpful. If you have started preparing for the coming year’s Europe submissions, you may refer to the Summary to How To Chambers: Europe article we shared last year for now. Once this year’s updates are available, we will share an article about them. Good luck!
