The public Legal 500 referee form now carries questions that were not there last year — and your own link may not be showing them.
We opened and read the public Legal 500 referee form on 18 September 2026. It carries a free-text box for criticism, a price band from $ to $$$$$, a scored question about the firm’s use of AI, and two questions about where the client’s loyalty sits. Every wording in this article is quoted verbatim from the form, with the date we read it.
The form is not static: the selection of edition, jurisdiction and practice area decides which questions a referee sees. Anyone about to send that link to their client referees should have opened and read it first.
Three dropdowns decide the questionnaire
The form at legal500.com/referee-form/ opens with three fields: “Select Publication”, “Select Jurisdiction” and “Select BPA”. Only that selection determines which questions appear.
At the head of the page Legal 500 notes: “If you are sharing this link directly with referees, please be aware that responses submitted via this form will not be tracked using our premium Referee Track & Add feature.” And at the same time: “All responses submitted through this form will still be logged and considered as part of our research process.” The answers count. You simply cannot see who gave them.
The new questions, verbatim
We found these six questions on 18 September 2026 in the form for United States 2027 – Private Client, confirmed by a second, independent reading of the same selection. They read:
“What could the firm do to improve its client service? (This will not be used in published research but may be made available (fully anonymised) to the firm at their request.)”
“How would you assess the cost of this law firm’s services relative to other firms you have used and/or the wider market? ($$$ = standard market rate)”
“If the firm used AI tools as part of its service, how valuable was this element?” — scale: Did not use · Not valuable · Somewhat valuable · Very valuable · Invaluable
“How effective is this firm as a strategic partner?”
“If the principle lawyer at the firm responsible for advising your company moved to a different law firm, would you follow them or stay with the firm?” — Your lawyer · Your firm · Not sure
“How relevant is the availability of lawyers to you in the course of their working relationship with you?”
The Legal 500, public referee form, read on 18 September 2026.
Three things stand out. First, the criticism box is not published, but can be released to the firm on request, fully anonymised — feedback you would otherwise never hear. Second, using AI is no longer neutral information; it is a scored criterion, and “Did not use” and “Not valuable” are available answers. Third, whether the client would follow the lawyer or stay with the firm has become a question of its own.
Why we are not publishing a chart by edition
We set out to map it: which edition asks what. We opened the form for eight combinations of edition, jurisdiction and practice area. The results were inconsistent — and the control run did not reproduce them: two independent readings of the same combination came back with different question sets.
Whether that is a loading order inside the form or genuinely different versions, we cannot determine from the outside. So we publish the questions, not an allocation we cannot evidence. A chart that does not reproduce is worse than no chart.
There is a practical consequence. Do not assume a particular version is running “in your country”. Open the link with exactly the selection your referees will receive, and read what is actually on the page.
What has stayed the same
The confidentiality wording sat unchanged above every form we opened: “Your comments will be treated as strictly confidential, and will not be attributed to you in any editorial or disclosed to the firm.” Unchanged too: the ten sliders — “Partner availability and engagement” among them — the 0 to 10 recommendation score, and the box through which a referee agrees to a call from the research team.
The scoring spine has not moved. What moved is the set of questions around it.
The EMEA 2027 cycle: what happens when
| 3 August 2026 | Deadline for referees and editorial submissions — passed. |
| September 2026 | Follow-up research begins. Referee emails go out. |
| ongoing | Your own link can supplement it — no tracking, but it counts. |
| March 2027 | EMEA 2027 rankings published. |
Legal 500 gives a guideline of at least 20 referees per practice area (“As many as possible! A good minimum guideline is at least 20 per practice area.”) and states that every column of the referee spreadsheet is mandatory: “Each piece of information requested in the spreadsheet serves a specific purpose and is mandatory.” For scale: Legal 500 says it sent more than 300,000 referee emails during its 2024 research.
Three things worth doing this week
One: open your own link. With the exact edition, jurisdiction and practice area your referees will see. Two minutes of work — and you know what to brief on.
Two: brief on the questions that are actually there. A referee prepared for a different form writes nothing at all. Someone who knows a criticism box is coming writes differently from someone who does not expect it.
Three: work the follow-up backwards from publication. Chasing responses in January is late for a ranking whose research started in September.
- Every directory deadline at a glance
- Submissions and ranking support
- The public Legal 500 referee form
- EMEA 2027 submissions page with deadlines and templates
As at 18 September 2026. Every question and quotation comes from the public Legal 500 referee form, which we opened and read that day; the deadlines and publication date come from the EMEA 2027 submissions page, the referee guideline from the Legal 500 FAQs. The question set can change at any time. We make no claim about which version runs in which edition (see above), nor about the version Legal 500 emails to referees — we do not have that version.