Most firms spend months on their directory submissions. They collate the work highlights, chase partners for referee details, and refine the submissions until the deadline. Then they submit to the categories that sound vaguely relevant, and move on.
Category selection is treated as a preliminary step. It is not. It is the single biggest factor likely to stop you being ranked before the researcher has read a single word.
The problem with the wrong category
When a submission lands in the wrong category, the researcher evaluating it is working with the wrong frame of reference. They are comparing your firm’s work against different competitors, in a different market, with different expectations. A strong submission in the wrong category does not just fail to rank, it shapes how the researcher perceives the firm: unclear about what they do, who they do it for, and where they operate. That perception persists.
We see this pattern consistently across clients. Excellent work presented in categories that simply cannot support it. The submission is not the problem. The category decision is.
Reading the category properly
Within a directory, the difference between two adjacent categories can be substantial. The directories publish their own definitions of what belongs in each category, but most firms don’t read them. We read them as a matter of course for every client, because the category definitions often reveal where a firm’s work sits most naturally and where the competitive field is thinner.
White-collar crime versus general crime is a classic example: many firms fall into the trap of submitting financial crime work into the general category. Chambers’ guidance makes it clear these should be kept separate. Likewise, employment categories are usually split into employee or employer-side. Don’t just throw all your employment work at one submission and hope the researcher will work it out.
One of the most overlooked aspect of the submissions process is guide launches. Not only do these state new categories you could submit to, but they run through the market trends their research has brought up, and what researchers will be analysing subsequent submissions against.
The jurisdictional question
The other category failure ELE sees most often is jurisdictional mismatch. Firms often pitch for national rankings because a regional one feels like a step down. But if you don’t do significant, sustained work on a national level, you simply won’t be ranked there. The same goes for individuals: a lawyer whose practice is primarily focussed on a specific region is much more likely to be ranked than a lawyer who was involved in one matter there, ten years ago.
Regional is not a consolation prize. A firm with strong regional market presence and good work in a regional category will rank. A firm with thin national coverage pitching into a national category will not.
General versus specialist directories
Within the main Chambers and Partners and Legal500 guides are specialist guides like Crisis & Risk Management and High Net Worth (Chambers) and the Global Green Guide (Legal 500). Lesser known guides like IFLR1000, WTR 1000, and IAM Patent 1000 cover specific sectors in even greater depth.
These are not interchangeable. They serve different research purposes and different audiences. A firm with serious capital markets or IP work faces a genuine strategic choice: build credibility in a specialist directory where the ranking means something to a specific client base, or consolidate in a generalist directory where the practice sits alongside all other work.
The answer depends on the firm’s commercial priorities, its evidence base, and where its target clients actually look. Getting this wrong means spending a submission cycle building credibility in the wrong place.
What good category strategy looks like
Ranked firms match their submission content to the category scope before they write a word of it. They check the directory’s definitions and they are honest about their jurisdictional reach. They commit to a category rather than hedging across several, because hedging produces diluted, unconvincing results in all of them.
They also build consistency across years. Rankings in directories don’t happen in year one. Researchers notice firms that appear repeatedly in the same category with relevant, growing work. Consistency signals market presence. A firm that submits to different categories in different years, or that moves between national and regional depending on who is managing the process that cycle, is invisible.
If you only remember one thing
Copy and pasting the same work highlight across multiple submissions is never going to get you ranked. Each matter must be tailored to the specific category. Take a significant real estate acquisition that involves corporate structuring, tax planning, and property work. The same transaction sits in three different categories, but the submission for each one needs a different centre of gravity.
For the real estate category, the highlight should lead with the property elements, the complexity of the title issues. The M&A angle is context, not content. For the corporate/M&A category, the focus shifts to issues like deal structure. The fact that the underlying asset was property is background. For the tax category, the write-up needs to foreground the tax matters like cross-border tax issues. Neither the property detail nor the corporate mechanics are the story.
The work is the same. The submission is not.
If your submissions are strong but your rankings aren’t moving, the problem may be where you are submitting rather than what you are writing. Our directories & rankings strategy service reviews your category choices, jurisdictional strategy, and competitive position.
