Legal Directory Consultants for Law Firm Submissions
What does a legal directory consultant do?
Law Business is an international legal directories consultancy. Since 2004 we have prepared submissions for Chambers and Partners, The Legal 500, JUVE, IFLR1000, IAM and other law firm rankings – either end to end or as support for your in-house team. A legal directory consultant selects the practice areas worth entering, writes and edits the matter descriptions, manages client referees and files everything before the deadline.
What is in a Chambers submission — and in a Legal 500 submission
Both are structured documents, filed on the publisher’s own template or through its portal. A Chambers submission sets out the size of the practice group, arrivals and departures, what the team is known for, how it differs from its competitors, and above all the matters of the past twelve months. Alongside it goes a separate referee spreadsheet with the clients Chambers may contact. Legal 500 submissions follow the same logic on a different form, with its own word limits and its own deadline per edition — Legal 500 states plainly: “We publish over 10 different editions, and each has its own deadline.”
Filing costs nothing. Chambers writes “Submitting to Chambers is free”, and the same holds at IFLR1000, IP STARS and ITR World Tax. What it does cost is working time inside the firm — which is where most submissions quietly fail, because the matters are collected in the last week before the deadline and the referees are asked too late.
If you want the detail before you decide anything: Chambers and Partners explained, bands 1 to 7 · The Legal 500 explained · all ten directories compared, with links to the official forms
Legal directory submission consulting: the three ways firms work with us
Firms come to us at three different points, and the right answer is rarely “do everything”.
You have written it and want a second opinion. We read the draft against the benchmarks we have built since 2004 and return a strengths-and-weaknesses report per practice area — including what a researcher will and will not be able to see in your matters.
You have the facts but not the writing time. We turn your material into submission-ready text, written by native speakers, in the order that serves your strategy rather than the order the cases happened in.
You want the whole thing off your desk. We choose the guides and practice areas, gather the facts from the partners, write the submission, manage the client referees within each publisher’s limits, file before the deadline — and stay with it until the ranking is published.
All current deadlines for every guide and country are on our directories and ranking deadlines page, with calendar export.
Law Business in numbers
We are a ranking specialist, not a marketing agency with a directory sideline. Our managing partner wrote the world’s first book on law firm rankings, “Kompass Kanzlei-Rankings”, and our team includes a former researcher from an international law firm ranking. Preparing and filing submissions to legal directories has been our core business since 2004 — strategy, matter selection, drafting, client referees, deadlines and the interviews that follow.
The rankings we work on: Chambers and Partners, The Legal 500, JUVE, IFLR1000, IAM Patent 1000, WTR 1000, IP STARS, Leaders League, Benchmark Litigation, GAR, ITR and asialaw. The full calendar with every submission deadline is public on our deadlines page.
Where our clients are: Austria, Germany, Switzerland, the Netherlands, France, Luxembourg, Spain, Italy, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Brazil, China and the United Arab Emirates. Our centre of gravity is Germany, Austria and Switzerland, and we work with international firms and with the continental European offices of global firms. More than 120 of them are listed by name on our client page.
Law Business provided us with important input regarding a new orientation and definition of the task profile of our business development / marketing department and the appointment of a new head of department. Mr. Dillinger knows the subject matter very well, which he was also able to demonstrate impressively in the equity partner circle.
We have mandated Law Business for several years to manage our submissions for legal directories. During this time, Law Business has helped us to improve our placements in top rankings. In addition, Mr. Dillinger and his team improved our entire work process for submissions.
We mandated Law Business for Chambers and Legal 500 support and gained important insights into how the international directories work – in particular through the analysis of the Chambers Insight Reports. If a law firm wants to deal with the directories in a serious manner, Law Business is the first port of call for me here.
Law Business has supported us for over 2 years in business development and marketing – especially with directories & rankings. We were very satisfied and were able to improve our ranking work during this time. Mr. Dillinger is highly valued by the rankings as a cooperation partner.
Law Business has supported us from 2015 to 2021 by preparing and submitting our ranking documents to top international rankings. During this time, we were included in the Chambers, JUVE and Legal 500 rankings and were also able to increase our ranking after our initial inclusion. For us, Law Business is the clear number one in the market for ranking consulting.
With our very first submission, we achieved a Legal 500 ranking through Law Business! The team guided us through the submission process very confidently and with very clear communication.
Law Business assisted us with our submission to Chambers and Legal 500 and helped us with our placement – and helped us to present the core arguments of our work in an appropriately focused way.
Highly recommended: we were able to benefit quickly from the comprehensive knowledge of the team in our submissions, they had an answer ready very quickly for every question – the team really knows the law firm industry very well.
What makes us special
- 1Europe’s longest-established rankings specialistsWe have been building expertise in law firm rankings since 2004 — and have done nothing else since.
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- 3The only book on the subjectKompass Kanzlei-Rankings — published by the leading legal publishers C. H. Beck, MANZ and Stämpfli.
- 4From the one-person show to the international firmDemonstrable ranking results across every size of firm. Our clients include Freshfields and Taylor Wessing.Sole practitionerBoutiqueMid-size firmInternational firm
Our service packages
For pricing information, please use our contact form below.
That is what our service packages are built on:
Review and benchmark of your submission
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If you prepare your submission yourself, we will provide you with suggestions for improvement.
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We benchmark your submission against the best practices we have established since 2004 and provide you with a report for each legal field.
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The report will show you how to improve your writing, helping ranking researchers to recognise and evaluate your work as effectively as possible.
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The report will also offer strategic advice on how to improve your submission, enabling your practice group and law firm to demonstrate the desired strengths.
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The report will provide this information for each matter and each non-matter section.
Texting of the entire submission
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If you “only” want us to handle the texting of the submissions, this package is the right choice.
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We create submission texts that are specially optimized for ranking researchers.
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We create texts for matter descriptions as well as for the non-matter texts of a submission such as "About our firm" etc
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We also focus on strategic content. We prioritize your matters in a specific sequence in order to take into account the strategic goals of the practice group and the law firm.
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We also take into account your preferred prioritization of selected partners.
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The texts are created by our native speakers from UK/US and Germany.
Conducting the entire submission for you
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We carry out for you the entire submission.
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We develop recommendations as to which matters (deals) should be used for the submission and prepare submission texts ready for dispatch.
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We collect your data firstly by desk research. Here we analyze all submission related documents from the past.
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From that data we create a first draft.
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Then we collect current information by mail or phone from the partners. From these information we create a second draft.
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If you have current databases we will use them as well.
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We will then provide you with the final draft. Once the submission has been approved, it can be uploaded to the directories.
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The texts are created by our native speakers from UK/US and Germany.
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We treat every submission as a project, sending reminders to partners regarding open feedback.
Creation of “follow up” submissions:
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A "follow-up" is a submission of a legal field that has already been submitted in another directory no later than four months ago.
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For instance: A submission was made to Chambers Banking & Finance.
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A submission made four months later to Legal 500 Banking & Finance would be designated as a "follow-up" submission.
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You will receive a discount for each such follow-up submission.
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We will not only add and write the new data, but also adjust formats and matter numbering accordingly.
Workshops, trainings and coachings
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Our workshops and trainings are aimed at ranking beginners, intermediates and advanced professionals.
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Trainings are tailored for legal professionals as well as for BD and marketing staff.
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We show you how to write submissions correctly and select the right content strategically for a successful submission.
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We show legal professionals how to select the right content to enhance their standing with the rankings.
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We show BD and marketing professionals how to motivate partners successfully to provide timely feedback and design the entire submission process effectively.
Frequently asked questions about ranking submissions
How does a submission with Law Business work?
It starts with the selection: which rankings, which practice areas, which office locations. We then gather the reference matters, write the matter descriptions, agree the client referees within the permitted limits and file on time. Support continues after filing — researcher queries, interview scheduling, the review once the guide is published. You decide how much sits with us: from a plain strengths-and-weaknesses report on a submission you wrote yourself, through to running the whole process.
What does a submission cost?
With the rankings themselves: nothing. Chambers puts it plainly — “The process is free. There is no cost involved in providing us with submissions.” Costs there arise only for add-on products such as profile pages or plaques, and those have no bearing on the assessment. Our fee depends on scope: how many rankings, how many practice areas, and which of our five service packages you choose. That is why we quote for your specific case rather than publish a flat rate. An initial conversation is free of charge.
Is it worth it for a small firm?
Yes — rankings assess the practice group, not the size of the firm. Chambers also makes clear that firm and individual rankings are independent: “Individual lawyers can be ranked while their law firm is not and similarly law firms can be ranked while individual lawyers are not.” A boutique of three lawyers in one clearly defined area is often better placed than a full-service firm spread across twelve. Chambers even runs a dedicated Spotlight guide for smaller and mid-size firms.
Which rankings are the right ones for us?
That depends on your practice area and where your offices are. For the German-speaking market, Chambers, The Legal 500 and JUVE are the base; in IP, IAM Patent 1000, WTR 1000 and IP STARS come in; in arbitration, GAR; in finance and tax, IFLR1000 and ITR World Tax. Office location matters: Chambers runs a separate Germany guide with its own form, while Austria and Switzerland go through the Europe guide. Firms filing for both complete two different forms.
When are the deadlines?
There is no single annual deadline. Chambers states: “Deadlines depend on guide updates and vary by practice area.” What governs is always the provider’s current research schedule. So that you do not have to check ten providers separately, we maintain every deadline by jurisdiction in our deadlines overview — each one can be added to Outlook or Google Calendar with a single click, with a reminder 30 days before.
Why Law Business?
Because we have done nothing else since 2004. That is where our benchmark comes from: we know what a matter description has to look like for a researcher to see the work behind it, and where submissions routinely fall short. And we know the individual providers’ forms in detail — what belongs in which field, which entries stay confidential and which are published.
- EVERSHEDS SUTHERLAND: "...Law Business helped us to improve our rankings in top legal directories..."
- FRESHFIELDS: "...know the material very well,...impressed our equity partners."
- TAYLOR WESSING: "...know the legal market excellently ."
Law Business Managing Partner Alexander Dillinger, in cooperation with prominent directories such as Chambers, Legal 500 and ThomsonReuters, has written the world’s first book on the subject of law firm rankings – the “Compass Kanzlei-Rankings”.