Your Chambers Submission Playbook: Tips From the Research Directors

[00:00:00] James Haggerty: For me, I think it’s really coming to the submission with a strategy in mind. I think the easy route — and admittedly sometimes the way it has to be done — is to include an equal spread for all the partners in the department. But if you can go beyond that, take the next step and think: OK, who’s had the bump year this year?

Who’s getting the headlines? Who is an up-and-coming person that we really want to champion? That’s when you see success.

[00:00:33] Announcer: Welcome to Spill the Ink, a podcast by Reputation Ink, where we feature experts in growth and brand visibility for law firms and architecture, engineering and construction firms. Now let’s get started with the show.

[00:00:50] Michelle Calcote King: Hi, everyone. I’m Michelle Calcote King. I’m your host, and I’m also the principal and president of Reputation Ink. We are a public relations and thought leadership marketing agency for B2B professional services firms, including law firms. To learn more, go to rep-ink.com. Today we’re talking about the Chambers and Partners Guide.

It’s one of the most prestigious directories in the legal industry, and we’re looking forward to seeing the 2026 rankings released in June. The 2027 cycle will open shortly after. We’re dedicating today’s episode to equipping your law firm with the tools to develop an outstanding submission. Today I’ve invited James Haggerty and Kush Cheema, who are both USA research directors at Chambers, to share tips for sophisticated submissions and the trends shaping the program.

Welcome to the show, James and Kush.

[00:01:44] James Haggerty: Thanks for having us.

[00:01:46] Kush Cheema: Thank you. 

[00:01:46] Michelle Calcote King: I’m excited to do this interview. Let’s set the stage. If you’ve been hiding under a rock in the legal industry, let’s talk about what the Chambers and Partners guide is and how it influences the legal services buying cycle.

[00:02:04] James Haggerty: The Chambers guide is basically a resource for in-house counsel. When you are trying to find external counsel, you might have an issue in an unfamiliar area or jurisdiction — maybe the counsel that you already use is conflicted out for some reason or otherwise unavailable.

You can come to chambers.com, check out our USA Guide and the guides for our other jurisdictions, all available for free to help you make those critical decisions. The USA Guide is broken up by jurisdiction — for example, Texas environment or Ohio corporate litigation. We’ve got 1,800 areas in the U.S. alone, and all these decisions, these rankings that we make, are based on work that’s submitted to us by the law firms themselves and a review of that work in conversation with clients as well.

We’re speaking to, I believe, around 350,000 legal industry professionals and law firm clients globally to inform our insights every year. It’s a big project. 

[00:03:08] Michelle Calcote King: That’s huge. Let’s talk about trends. I’d love to hear your take on what you’re seeing in the legal market generally, and also any trends around how firms are approaching their submissions.

[00:03:28] James Haggerty: Kush, why don’t you take a of questions.

couple 

[00:03:31] Kush Cheema: There is simply more interest than ever. I think most of us will have read that Thomson Reuters report about demand growth in the U.S. legal industry. It’s starting to shift down, and clients are a bit more aware of the portability of the work, especially when cost pressures start to bite.

We’re seeing a lot more interest from smaller firms and boutique firms looking to amplify their credentials via a benchmarking and marketing tool that Chambers can provide. I also know of at least three or four AmLaw 10-20 firms that have made Chambers rankings a core part of their growth strategy for the next five to 10 years.

The interest continues to evolve. We’ve also seen differing usage in how people approach Chambers. It’s primarily a client’s guide to the legal profession, but it’s also morphed into a tool for benchmarking. We know law firms use it for recruitment. We know they use it for market intelligence.

If you just look at the merger announcements for the A&O Sherman merger and the Perkins Coie merger, they very proudly displayed their Chambers rankings as a tool to differentiate those firms against the rest of the market. Interest continues to increase, which is a good thing for us.

[00:04:47] Michelle Calcote King: That’s great. And tell me about what you’re seeing in the market right now. We’re seeing the big mergers, but we’re also seeing a lot of spinoffs and boutiques being formed. How are you adapting to the trend of the legal market exploding, consolidating and fracturing at the same time?

[00:05:16] Kush Cheema: It’s difficult. The nature of how we are set up and how the market works sometimes necessitates that we compare apples and oranges. What Paul Weiss does is very different from what Quinn Emanuel’s litigation practice does, which is itself very different from a Houston Henigan or a Wilkinson Stekloff — those smaller boutique firms.

We do have to appreciate the clients as they are — how they approach the market, how they market themselves, what their capabilities are. We look for common themes, but there are instances where we have to apply a different set of criteria to a Gibson Dunn versus a Williams & Connolly, to cover those segments of the market.

As a greater number of mid-market firms become increasingly sophisticated, we’ve added more specialist mid-market tables and dedicated coverage for specialist boutiques — whether that’s ADR, white collar, criminal defense. We’ve got one for mass tort litigation, IP litigation, things like that.

We’ve also been evolving to capture what the top end of the market is really going after. In the last two years, we’ve introduced asset management M&A, private equity secondaries, private credit — and probably the section that has the most interest out of everything — corporate governance.

These areas are being pioneered by the global elite law firms, and we stay on top of them to make sure the USA guide provides the latest insights. 

[00:06:40] Michelle Calcote King: That’s great. So you’re responding to the trend, diving deep into those areas.

How should a firm’s size, focus and geographic footprint determine how it approaches its Chambers submissions? 

[00:07:02] James Haggerty: For me, I think that really depends on how they want to put their best foot forward — how you can play to your strengths and play to what your clients want.

From the client side, we’re having different conversations with the likes of Paramount and Netflix. They’ll be emphasizing size, scale and regulatory chops. A firm might have ancillary strengths beyond that, which might differ from the conversations we’re having for a firm like, say, Axinn.

There, we’re looking at more insider knowledge — how are antitrust regulators going to approach things? If firms can think about how they want to mirror their client needs in what they’re telling us and how they’re constructing their submissions, and really say, ‘This is the niche strength that clients come to us for.’

This is where we play in a certain market, and that really makes us stand out. Not every firm can be everything to everyone — I’m sure a few are trying. But if you have that niche strength, if you have that real client responsiveness to a particular need, let us know. That’s key. 

[00:08:06] Michelle Calcote King: Sounds like positioning.

Sounds like good old marketing positioning strategy. We’ve seen this influx of firms competing for Band 1. Can the market support that influx of firms competing to be at Band 1? Are you seeing any conversations suggesting there might not be room for everyone?

How are you handling that?

[00:08:32] Kush Cheema: With the caveat that this is probably my personal opinion: I really don’t think the market will support the number of firms trying to carve out that global elite niche. Kirkland, Ellis and Latham made up 10% of the revenue of the AmLaw 100 last year.

The figures released by the London Stock Exchange Group at the beginning of January said that Kirkland and Latham dominated the M&A market. Kirkland represented parties in 1% of all M&A last year. It doesn’t sound like much, but that is 4,000 lawyers.

Operating in a market where there are 500,000 law firms between the U.S. and the U.K. What we are seeing at the same time, though, is that based on that Thomson Reuters State of the Industry report, demand growth is accelerating in the mid-size firms and the lower AmLaw 200.

Demand growth among the AmLaw 100 is around 1.9%, versus about 6% for firms outside the AmLaw 100. So work is being concentrated at the very high end, but demand mobility is shifting down the law firm value chain.

You’ve seen Kirkland and Latham operate more like Big Four accountancy firms that become all things to all people. We’ve seen exactly what’s happened to that market in terms of consolidation, and the winners and losers.

Paul Weiss and Sullivan & Cromwell — Sullivan & Cromwell this week made a dramatic expansion of their London office, and Paul Weiss did so last year. I think S&C also opened a Houston office this week. You’re seeing A&O Sherman and Hogan Lovells competing. I think A&O Sherman will become an AmLaw 4 firm this year.

Hogan Lovells after the merger will be, too.

Everyone is chasing that top table, but I don’t think there is enough work to support the fee structures that these firms are going to charge. I think you will see winners and losers. I don’t think we’re going to see a Bingham McCutchen-and-Dewey-type explosion.

These law firms are too successful — some of them are almost too big to fail. But I think some of them are going to be moving down the value chain and focusing more on mid-market work, which means they’re not likely to be seen at the top table of M&A and private equity.

[00:10:54] Michelle Calcote King: That makes a lot of sense. Staying on the M&A discussion: For firms that have recently merged or are in the process of merging, are there any tips you would provide in terms of how they approach their submissions during or directly after a merger?

[00:11:15] Kush Cheema: We’re patient.

James has been doing most of the backend database work. We have one ancient system that we have to put some of our mergers through, and it is just not fun. It takes multiple weeks to get it done, but we open up a conversation with the law firm as soon as the merger is announced.

We discuss data privacy issues, submissions history, ranking histories and things like that. We will handle everything on the backend. All we need from the law firms is their permissions and data on who needs logins, attorney moves, office closures and things like that.

The main advice with submissions is just be open with us. In the first year, we recognize — A&O Sherman mentioned that they anticipated a 10% reduction in partner size in the years following the merger — we are not going to make dramatic changes because the law firm might have a different strategy.

They’re going through operational issues. We will hold things in place, taking the higher of the two rankings if the firm is ranked in both tables, but we will take more of a wait-and-see approach. So don’t worry if you’re working at Hogan Lovells or Cadwalader, Schulte or McDermott, and you’re anticipating steep drops because you won’t have as much time to provide a submission.

That’s not what we do. We take a very slow, longer look and poll the clients on what they’ve experienced. 

[00:12:35] Michelle Calcote King: What are you seeing in terms of client feedback during and after these mergers? Any trends coming out, or anything surprising? 

[00:12:48] James Haggerty: It’s something we’ve always got our ear to the ground for.

When we’re speaking to that many clients, that many other attorneys in the market, understanding the picture of a merger and the immediate pre- and post-merger period is something we’re deeply interested in. But as Kush was saying, we also take a really long view at Chambers. One of our mantras is that cumulative feedback buildup.

You don’t want to make a very quick move, like an instant response to a headline. It’s not the kind of research that Chambers does. We take our time and consult with tens of thousands of individuals before we make our moves. Not to say that we’re afraid to make bold moves where that is reflected — but particularly if you think about A&O Sherman.

It’s the most pertinent example. It’s really a complementary merger — firms with a long history in financial services, etc. We have had clients already telling us this is offering greater depth and greater breadth for the services that they’re used to getting from the firm.

While it’s maybe a little early to tell, given the long view we like to take, it’s something that’s so important to our process. 

[00:14:03] Michelle Calcote King: Let’s switch to AI — the trend you can’t ignore. Are there new questions or feedback coming up from clients in your research about AI?

[00:14:20] Kush Cheema: I wish AI was the one question we could avoid, because it comes up in every conversation. It’s just very mixed so far. I don’t think we’ve seen law firms coalescing around a service provider, and it’s 

[00:14:32] Michelle Calcote King: yes. 

[00:14:33] Kush Cheema:  Cleary has bought a provider. Lots of law firms are signing up with Harvey.

One of our former colleagues has just joined Lara, which is the European competitor making a big push in the United States. It’s still a bit in flux. What we hear most of all is largely from a billing perspective: How are the potential efficiency savings ultimately going to be reflected in the back pockets of the clients?

Is that going to lead to a decrease in billing? I don’t think that’s going to happen. Also, this is the latest innovation which people are predicting will finally deliver the death blow for the billable hour. Again, 90% of billing is still

done hourly. I’m loath to be the next person to predict it. But there are some early indications from clients and law firm leaders that this finally might be the battering ram that brings us to more outcome-based billing or at least blended billing services.

It’s still early days. Law firms are still trying to work out where adoption will be most useful and what implication that has downstream. 

[00:15:48] Michelle Calcote King: So it sounds like you’re not getting specific feedback around actual client service delivery, but more around efficiency and lower bills.

I know that Chambers itself is implementing AI. Is there anything you’ve learned from your own AI implementation that law firms should be paying attention to?

[00:16:18] James Haggerty: Apart from billing, there are so many opportunities for AI — AI is almost the all-opportunity tool. It probably starts with efficiency savings: thinking about where you can use AI, where you can determine that it fits into your workflow to basically fix the leverage model of the firm.

Can you work with law schools to improve the way your associate intake is going to come in? Are you going to look at the way their role would change based on AI, almost completely differently from how they’re currently being educated?

On the submission side, it’s really going to depend on what firms are putting into the front end. If your knowledge systems, the matter management systems, are structured, detailed and work with AI, you could create a submission almost at the click of a button with the right software package.

It’s a really big opportunity on the operations side, streamlining workflows for legal professionals, marketing or operations folks. 

[00:17:32] Michelle Calcote King: Agreed. Let’s get into submission tips. What are the most frequent questions you get from firms about their submissions?

[00:17:47] James Haggerty: Number one, far and away, is deadline extensions. We are happy to grant deadline extensions where it works out, with a conscious knowledge that deadlines exist for a reason. We have our own workflow. There are certain times of the year where we want to have that information, and as Kush alluded to, some of our antiquated systems —

we’ve made so much investment in our backend IT, and we’re moving away from those old systems into new ways of working. The need to have data upfront and the ability to interpret data is only growing. While we totally understand how law firms work and how operationally getting sign-off on a submission can be really difficult, we’re willing to work with you on those deadlines.

They are there for a reason. 

[00:18:37] Michelle Calcote King: Anything beyond deadlines that you get queried about on a regular basis? 

[00:18:46] James Haggerty: I’d say it’s who to include as a referee. 

[00:18:50] Michelle Calcote King: 

[00:18:51] James Haggerty: If we’re talking about the clients that we speak to — those big, high-level conversations we’ll be having with some of the parties in the news of the day — look beyond that when you’re figuring out your referees.

The most valuable person you can submit for the Chambers research process is somebody who’s got the time and the willingness to participate in it. 

If you imagine the CEOs — even some very high-profile GCs — maybe they’re not going to have the time to participate with us.

Many of them prefer to, but if you’re right in the middle of a deal cycle, maybe they’re not the person to put down right away. Also, someone a bit more junior, a little further down the chain, will actually have been in the weeds with you and will have seen the technical work that the lawyers are actually doing.

There’s so much value in speaking to someone who says, beyond the hiring decision, beyond the rubber-stamping, I know why someone was good. 

[00:19:49] Michelle Calcote King: I’ve heard that over and over again — the importance of the referees. What mistakes do you see in submissions? Are there any common ones that are easily addressable?

[00:20:02] Kush Cheema: Often it’s providing a full-length college essay for a simple work highlight. We will read the submission at the start of the process and at the end of the process. If we interview the law firm, we’re looking to be able to quickly compare matters that might appear in a Sullivan & Cromwell submission versus a Debevoise submission.

There are areas where length is needed — in our appellate research, you’ll have to put in the initial dispute at hand, what the circuit court might have said, and then what the ultimate argument before a state supreme court or federal circuit might have said. In private equity M&A, it can be as simple as: “We advised Bain Capital on the acquisition of Y Company.”

This is the first-of-its-kind deal in this industry.” It can be that simple. We’ve all worked with partners — they want to put in everything they’ve done, everything they might have done, everything their dog did on a transaction.

Feel free to aggressively edit it so it just lays out exactly what the firm did. My advice has historically been to work highlight it like a New York Times article — you have a one-sentence summary of what actually happened, and then a short paragraph that explains it in a little more depth.

That’s all we need. 

[00:21:26] Michelle Calcote King: So it’s being overly verbose, not really understanding what the key information is. It sounds like firms also aren’t working with their referees in the best way possible or thinking through who those referees are. What do you think the firms that get it right do — when you read them and think, wow, this is a well-crafted submission?

[00:21:52] James Haggerty: For me, it’s really coming to the submission with a strategy in mind. The easy route — and admittedly sometimes the way it has to be done — is to include an equal spread for all the partners in the department. You don’t really get into the politics of it all.

Maybe you leave it to the department head to submit the folks for you and you just work with that. But if you can go beyond that, take the next step and think: OK, who’s had the bump year this year? Who’s getting the headlines? Who is an up-and-coming person that we really want to champion — where we can maybe let others take a backseat this year where it’s been a little less exciting?

If you come to a submission with that kind of intentionality — who you are putting forward, how you organize your work highlights, which person you choose within your group to really promote — that’s when you see success. And if you match what you are writing and who you are highlighting with referees who can speak

with some authority to what that person did — so many times we’ll hear, ‘This is the team, I mainly work with the lead partner, and there were other people, but I didn’t really interact with them.’ If you can send us someone to talk to who did work on the technical details with some of your junior folks, who you really want to highlight in the matter highlights and the rest of the submission — that’s when you know you’re onto a winner.

Come at it with a bit of intentionality and try your best to work through the department politics. 

[00:23:26] Kush Cheema: The one thing I would add is lean into your sectoral strengths. We know Debevoise has a big insurance client base. We know McDermott is probably the pioneering firm in healthcare.

If you are putting forward a private equity submission and 95% of your clients are investing in the energy space, point out your former regulators, your transactional folks, your fund formation folks who might have come from an ExxonMobil.

The other final thing is: if there are obvious gaps in our coverage — I mentioned our corporate governance tables that we put together a couple of years ago. What that came out of was a box in a submission for our securities advisory section saying that lots of lawyers file 10-K and 10-Q forms to the SEC.

What our firm does is provide a holistic service that covers not just shareholder activism, but also CEO departures and board evaluations. They pointed out that our coverage was slightly myopic of that area, and we should probably expand further.

They had a conversation with us, we had a conversation with a lot of other firms, and that led to the genesis of our corporate governance table. If there are areas that you think we’re covering too narrowly or not at all, always feel free to get in touch. 

[00:24:49] Michelle Calcote King: Are there submissions where you think a firm wasn’t ready yet?

Where the message is, come back and talk to me when you’ve done this? 

[00:25:13] James Haggerty: There’s a good amount of us at Chambers who would rather have the information.

If you think you’ve got something to share and you want to put together what your offering is, let’s share it with Chambers, share it with the world almost. Let us know and we can give you a steer on that. There are products available that can give you an additional look at how our decision-making has been going.

If you have a story to tell and you are competing — you’ve opened up as a new practice in a given state or jurisdiction — you do want to put something together for us. We’ll certainly take a look at it. 

[00:25:58] Michelle Calcote King: 

[00:25:58] James Haggerty: Every single firm that submits anything to us is evaluated by our research team.

If, on the flip side, you don’t really know what you want to get out of the process, maybe that’s the time to take a step back and think: These are the firms already listed in the area that we’re interested in being listed in.

Do we as a firm play in that space? Do we compete with them? And if the answer is no, but you’re also not seeing your work covered anywhere else, that’s the time to pick up on Kush’s point and get in touch with us and say, look, there’s no space for us because we’re doing this — and maybe you don’t have that yet.

[00:26:38] Kush Cheema: On James’ point about our cumulative process: It does sometimes provide a building block. The group that carved off from Paul Weiss, led by Karen Dunn and Bill Isaacson, to form their own litigation boutique — I don’t think they submitted in their first year, but we did a bit of investigating.

The firm hadn’t officially opened — we didn’t have an address on their website yet. We did try to do some pre-work, just looking at them, and we’re looking at them in a bit more depth this year. It might not be immediate, but it does help us further along the line.

[00:27:10] Michelle Calcote King: How do you address firms that disagree with your rankings? I’m sure you hear from firms that say, I can’t believe you included this firm in Band 1. What should firms do if they feel that the rankings don’t

reflect the reality they see in the marketplace? 

[00:27:42] James Haggerty: First of all, please don’t sit on it and only mention it in your submission — your one opportunity a year. Please get in touch with us. Whether it’s reaching out to me, the senior team in London, Kush or our colleagues in the U.S., we’re always open to having that conversation.

There could be times when there’s something we’ve missed, something we’ve not quite seen in the same way — as Kush was talking about, a gap in our coverage. There could be an area where over time we’re listing an apples-and-oranges situation. On the other hand, there might be insights we can offer about how we are interpreting a market or a given practice area that the law firm isn’t seeing, because we’ve spoken to, say, 50 or 100 law firms about that area.

When there’s a disagreement like that, we’re always willing to speak about it, work on it and see whether we can come to the right outcome. Most of the time — I’d say 90% of the conversations I have — people turn to me and say,

‘You’ve pretty much got this right, except for the fact that I’m not in Band 1.’ 

[00:28:53] Michelle Calcote King: 

[00:28:53] James Haggerty: But you get that a lot. 

[00:28:55] Kush Cheema: When it comes to other firms, just bear in mind we wouldn’t share details from one submission to another. But there are some things that we see. In areas where law firms come across other law firms fairly regularly — joint defense panels in white collar criminal defense, panels for designated counsel for a private equity fund formation matter —

where one law firm has a technical appreciation of the work of another law firm, that’s where it counts a bit more. But if it’s our environmental law section, which is largely lawyer-provides-advice-to-client with no other law firms typically involved,

we take it with a pinch of salt when one attorney says they’ve never seen this firm do quality work. It’s based on what we’ve seen in the submission and what we’ve heard from their own clients. 

[00:29:47] James Haggerty: That’s the reason to participate with us. Send in the submission, and if you’ve got someone in the market who’s going to come out and say something like that about you, and you’ve shared examples of your work with us, well, we know they’re wrong.

It’s a great reason to tell your story to Chambers.

[00:30:04] Michelle Calcote King: I’ve been doing this for well over 20 years, and I feel like I’m having to do less and less convincing clients that Chambers is worth their submission and their time. I wonder if you feel the same — that guides like Chambers are more and more becoming a differentiator for firms and a way that they can help market themselves and position themselves.

Are you seeing that? And how are you seeing firms leverage their Chambers rankings in their marketing? 

[00:30:42] Kush Cheema: We don’t live in a universe now where the general counsel of Advent has historically been a Weil Gotshal lawyer, and that necessarily means they’re sending the work back to Weil.

You’re not going to the law firm of your golf buddy. You have to justify these multimillion- and multibillion-dollar bills to your CFO. Therefore, Chambers is being used as justification a lot more. We’ve sent out letters confirming our rankings

to law firms so they can use them in their RFPs and pitch documents. We operate now in a buyer’s market, so clients are being more discerning. That’s where any tool that is trusted, verified and independent has value. We don’t have a commercial consideration in our rankings — firms can buy real estate on the website and more in-depth reports, but only after the rankings have been finalized and James and I have given the go-ahead.

That’s becoming a more trusted resource for differentiation. We’re not saying that the general counsel of the Saudi Public Investment Fund is looking at Chambers, seeing that Kirkland Ellis is a Band 1 private equity firm, and going straight to Kirkland.

We’re saying that they’re using chambers.com as a tool to narrow 500 firms down to 15 firms. And then they can go through their own processes. 

[00:32:09] James Haggerty: Kush and I attend the Association of Corporate Counsel conference every year for their annual meeting. Speaking to the GCs face-to-face like that,

you hear so many stories. You hear folks say, ‘I actually needed someone in Guatemala recently, and I had no idea, so I turned to Chambers to get that answer.’ 

We speak to large corporations who say they had to go through a panel refresh process, they’ve had some changes on their internal team.

They wanted to have another look and used Chambers as the starting point. You’ve also got folks who come to Chambers thinking: I’ve taken on a new role in this business, I now have greater responsibility in our legal department. Let me familiarize myself with a third-party accredited view of my current panel firm and where their skills are.

[00:32:57] Michelle Calcote King:

[00:32:58] James Haggerty: Whether it’s the firm or the individual attorneys, it’s really gratifying to see that. You hear more and more from clients on that front. I think that’s reflected in the participation — every year more and more law firms choose to send in submissions to Chambers.

The sheer number of people we’re speaking to year on year continues to climb as well. Chambers is a really well-known brand in the U.S. legal market, and where it has so much value for general counsels is in the stories they tell us — ‘Oh yeah, I spoke with your analyst.’

We had a great interview, it was back and forth, and oh yeah, I heard from my friend over at Company B that she spoke to you as well. The rankings that we’re producing are based on feedback from a community of peers in the legal profession. It’s other GCs, other CLOs — they’re all contributing to these rankings and insights.

So you can come to Chambers with the confidence that people just like you, in similar roles, have contributed to what you are seeing there. There’s so much value in that. 

[00:34:07] Kush Cheema: One of my favorite stories — I’ve lived here for six years — is that the chief legal officer of a top 10 U.S. bank thanked me for my service a couple of months ago. It finally felt like I’d made it in America.

[00:34:21] Michelle Calcote King: Yeah, there you go. I like that. What about the impact of Chambers for smaller firms? We’ve talked a lot about the bigger AmLaw 100 firms, but what about those smaller, 20- to 200-attorney firms? Do you see an impact on those firms and how they’re getting or keeping work?

[00:34:55] James Haggerty: Remember, Chambers is all across all 50 states. We’re in D.C. — we’re nationwide. If you are a smaller firm based in Nebraska, out of Omaha or wherever, you have the same opportunity to send in a submission as a big firm in New York.

You’ve got the same 20 matter highlights, the same referees, and we spend the same time and energy reviewing what you’ve put forward. If you want to stand out in a local market where you’re attracting regional or state-level work, you can come to Chambers and go through the same accreditation process with the same world-class research team as any of the AmLaw 10 players.

You can really stand out, and you know that you can, because we know what the work looks like. So many law firms choose to participate with us that if we’re giving you the top-tier rankings, we’re highlighting your work — we’re not doing that in isolation. We have a review of everything that other firms in that state or jurisdiction have been sending us, and we can compare that with other work we’re seeing across different jurisdictions where it might be related or give extra context.

The same applies to boutique firms. There is such a need in the U.S. legal market for boutiques. Sometimes you want to go to someone for specialized niche expertise that doesn’t fit the picture of a larger law firm, or maybe it’s a conflict situation.

As a boutique, you can still participate in the Chambers process and get that same level playing field of evaluation. For smaller firms, we have a fantastic project called Chambers Spotlight, where we’re looking for very small firms doing local market work, up to mid-market and regional work for the bigger of the smaller players.

It’s a way of participating with Chambers and getting recognition for the work you are doing in your local market. You can have the same evaluation from our global research team that the Big Law players are having. There’s a lot of value in coming to Chambers as a small firm to get that standout accreditation.

[00:37:11] Michelle Calcote King: Got it. That’s great. As we’re wrapping up: This podcast will air in around March 2026. The USA Guide launches in June, and then the next submission cycle opens in July. What should firms be doing in that Q2 timeframe? What should they be documenting or preparing for the next cycle?

[00:37:42] Kush Cheema: In April we will release our schedule for the forthcoming year. There will be some changes in there, so get ahead of that. If there are any date changes, we will try to make it as obvious as possible. I know some firms go through a two- to three-month process to start collecting all the data for that July deadline.

Last year I was telling firms to collect deal sheets — we were all expecting a big M&A boom that just didn’t happen in the first half of last year. So I’m very loath to make predictions about what you should be collecting. But from what I hear from law firm leaders, private equity M&A

and strategic M&A are going to come back in a big way in the next few months. So be prepared to be bombarded by your attorneys for all the M&A deals they’re doing, and be very selective about who you’re going to be putting forward. James and I will be retreating to our little hermit’s caves over March and April to try to finalize our decisions.

There are over 100,000 decisions that we need to make

[00:38:46] Michelle Calcote King:

[00:38:47] Kush Cheema: over the next couple of months. That’ll be fun for us.

[00:38:50] Michelle Calcote King: Is there anything I didn’t ask that’s important to this discussion, as law firm marketers and managing partners listen and think about their Chambers submissions?

[00:39:06] James Haggerty: If you’re thinking about any aspect of what’s coming up and you’re uncertain or have some questions, get in touch. It really hurts me when we’re halfway through the process and someone eventually emails to say, ‘Hey, I had this problem five months ago and I didn’t really know what to do.’

If you have an issue, a question, something that you think we could improve or just clarify, I would love for you to reach out to Kush, myself or my team in London. We really want to have an open dialogue with the market.

We appreciate the amount of work that goes into putting together the submissions, wrangling the approvals and the attorneys to get everything signed off, and putting together those referee lists and making those selections. We know it’s a lot of work. We want to make that process as frictionless as possible.

It’s mutual benefit.

[00:40:07] Michelle Calcote King: That’s great. Well, thank you both. We’ve been talking to James Haggerty and Kush Cheema of Chambers. Thank you for your time today. 

[00:40:16] James Haggerty: Thank you very much.

[00:40:17] Kush Cheema: Thank you.

[00:40:17] James Haggerty: Thanks for having us.[00:40:21]

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