content from directories

Your submission shouldn’t sit in a PDF for the rest of the year

Most firms treat directory submissions as a once-a-year exercise. The firms getting the most from them treat submissions as the entry point to a year-round programme of content, insight and intelligence.

The problem with submissions in isolation

By the time your Chambers and Legal 500 submissions are signed off, partners have been interviewed, matters have been carefully drafted, referees have been engaged, and your team has spent weeks refining the messaging.

Then most of it sits in a PDF.

If the only metric for a directory submission is whether a client instructed you because of it, you’re going to struggle to justify the cost. Submissions in isolation are hard to defend, particularly to partners watching the marketing budget.

The case for the year-round view

The submission file is the only place in your firm where, every year:

partners hand over their best matters
those matters are fact-checked, sanitised and approved
your messaging is sharpened against direct competitors
your positioning is tested across practice areas
your team listens to clients at scale through your referees

That isn’t a compliance task. It’s a content asset. With the right process, it feeds pitching, bids, website content, case studies, biography updates, client listening, brand insight and competitor analysis throughout the year.

It also future-proofs you. Chambers and Legal 500 are both developing data products. New technology is starting to integrate directories work with CRM, bid management and client listening tools. The firms still treating submissions as a once-a-year drill are going to fall further behind the firms that have joined it up.

Step 1: Get the submissions right

We manage submissions across Chambers, Legal 500, IFLR and the other directories that matter to your firm. We offer a full outsourced service if you want everything off your desk, or a pick-and-mix arrangement (editing only, referee development, Legal 500 mapping) if you have an established process and need targeted support.

We also offer training bundles for lawyers and marketing teams, from short lunch sessions through to detailed walk-throughs of the submission documents and trainee mentoring.

Step 2: Make the submission work twice

Once your submissions are approved, we turn that content into a suite of materials that supports pitching, marketing and visibility throughout the year:

Publishable case studies for your website and capability documents
Pitch-ready matter summaries (short and long, tagged by service and sector)
Pitch-ready biographies and elevator-style summaries
Practice and sector capability documents
Award entries drawn from existing matter content
Light-touch updates to your service and sector pages

We work in three bundles depending on the scale of your existing submissions programme, with a capability bolt-on for firms that want fully built capability documents covering their core service areas.

How it works

You get one point of contact who oversees and manages the work. Behind that, a flexible team that scales up and down with your needs, made up of former Chambers and Legal 500 researchers, in-house directories managers and trained referee developers. Strong relationships with editors and research teams. Information barriers where you need them. Cloud-based project management throughout.

In short, we don’t just explain how to get more from your submissions. We actually do the work.

Talk to us

If you’re rethinking your directories programme for the year ahead, get in touch. We’ll talk you through what would work for your firm and share pricing.