Last fall, Amy wrote a post about impending changes to the Chambers submission process; Changes Afoot for Lawyer’s Favorite Listing. Law firm marketers let Chambers know that moving to a two-deadline schedule was not welcomed. They heard them, and decided not to proceed with the change, but to continue with rolling deadlines based on state and practice area.
Last week, we called Laura Mills, Chambers’ USA Editor, to find out about key dates and any updates to the research schedule that we should be aware of, and the highlights are below. We provided more details in a memo that we sent to Knapp Marketing’s contact list (email info@knappmarketing.com to receive a copy).
Initial Rankings Notification: Chambers plans to email firm contacts to alert them that the initial ranking information (attorneys and practice groups – no bands) is ready for viewing via each firm’s administrative page this week, as early as February 22nd.
Band Notification: Chambers will alert firms to the specific bands in which attorneys and practices ranked at least two weeks before the June 8th launch, possibly sooner.
2013 Research Schedule: Instead of running a nine-month research schedule, Chambers is condensing it into six months, with submissions due June 1 – November 1 and research running from July – December 2012. The first round of submissions for the 2013 Guide will be due on June 1. The schedule will be posted in mid-late March.
Possible Change to References: To avoid reference fatigue, Chambers has a policy whereby they will only contact the same reference once in a six to eight month period. Sometimes, this means that a firm’s reference won’t be contacted because another firm provided the same reference months earlier. Chambers is considering some changes to how they collect references from law firms, which would be geared towards avoiding this situation. We’ll be sure to post the details should the change occur.
Knapp Marketing has worked closely with firms to craft rankings processes and strategies, draft submissions that tell a compelling story about the firm and attorneys, with an aim at increasing their standings in Chambers and other directories. We’ll be monitoring comments to this post and are happy to answer any questions you have.