Q: What does In Progress status on the Referee Management Tool mean?

In P rogress status – When Chambers has emailed the referee and we are early in the research process. No action is required at this stage and normally we will see referees replying to our emails in the days and weeks after we reach out . However, you will also be able to see the date our last email was sent next to the referee’s contact status, so if you are following up with your referee to notify them Chambers has reached out, you can share that information.

Q: What does Action Required: Invalid Email in the Referee Management Tool mean?

Action required : Invalid Email status will appear if we have received a failure notification when attempting to email them with the contact details provided to us. We recommend that you pass on our researcher’s contact details to your referee so they can email us directly if they wish to do so.

Q: What does Action Required: No Reply in the Referee Management Tool mean?

Action required : No R eply status will appear if we have attempted to contact your referee but by the half-way point in the research process for this section, we have not yet had any communication back from the referee in reply to our outreach. This will give you an indication of which referees you may wish to encourage to share their experiences with Chambers before the Research End Date. This gives you plenty of time to take this action before our research on your section is complete.

Question 1

How quickly after uploading referees should I expect to see their names appear in the Referee Management Tool?

Accepted Answer

Our systems have to process tens of thousands of submissions and over 820,000 referees each year and usually it will take some time to process all those referees. Normally you can expect to see referees appear in your tool 24 hours after you upload a referee spreadsheet via your online account.

There may be some instances where some referees have to be processed manually, which may mean this process takes longer, however, please rest assured that your referees will be fully processed before research for a section begins and a researcher begins sending emails to anybody.

If there are any occasions where you believe referees you provided are missing from the tool and a section is already set to ‘Researching’, please do notify the researcher listed as responsible for the section in our Research Schedule so they can check this for you.

Question 2

What does the Research Status in the Referee Management Tool mean?

Accepted Answer

The Research Status, which is displayed for each practice area and location you have submitted for on the homepage of the Referee Management Tool, reflects what stage we are at in relation to our research. There are three statuses that can be displayed in the tool:

To be started – you will see this status before the Research Start Date. This means that research has not yet started for this section and that a researcher has yet to be assigned to it. At this stage, submissions and referees can still be amended or re-uploaded until research commences. Once a researcher is assigned to start work and is ready, they will move the section to ‘In Progress’ and no further changes can be made after this point.

In Progress – you will see this status appear on a section at any time after the Research Start Date, but before the Research End Date for the section. This status means that a researcher is assigned to the section and they are actively conducting research. This means they are reviewing submissions, emailing referees and conducting interviews and surveys. Research will remain in progress until the researcher has collected all the information they can in the time allotted. During the ‘In Progress’ stage, customers are encouraged to monitor the status of their referees and any actions that may be required to help Chambers reach them. You can inform your referees when Chambers has reached out and also check the statuses weekly or halfway through to send reminders to any referees that have not yet responded.

Complete – this status will appear after the Research End Date for the section. It means research has finished for this section. The section will move to the Historic area of your RMT 20 days after the Research End Date shown. The researcher has completed their attempts to contact and collect feedback from as many referees as possible and has now moved on to a different section/research project. We cannot go back and conduct further interviews or request feedback at this stage, so we encourage customers not to follow up with their referees further after this point. The final status of referees will change to either ‘Contacted’ or ‘Unable to contact’ to give you a clear indication of the final results of our outreach to your referees.

Question 3

What happens in the Referee Management Tool after the Research End Date?

Accepted Answer

The Research End Date is specific to each research project on a given practice area and tells you when our researcher will no longer be available to referees to carry out interviews with them. After this date, referee statuses will change to either Contacted or Unable to contact, based on whether our attempts to reach your referee were successful or not.

Once the Research End Date passes, the researcher will be collating the information to determine our rankings together with an experienced Research Manager or Principal Research Specialist and will then move on to research a different practice area. To capture any late responses from referees we receive and consider while the researcher is carrying out this task, the statuses will continue to update if any further contact is made with a referee within 20 days after the Research End Date. After this date, there will be no further updates and the section will move to your ‘Historic’ tab.

Question 4

Why are some of my sections in the Historic Tab of the Referee Management Tool?

Accepted Answer

Following customer feedback, we have created the Historic area of Referee Management to allow firms to continue using their referee contact data. A section moves to the Historic tab 20 days after the Research End Date, signifying that the research for that section has completed and no further changes will be made to the referee statuses. The historic data will build for up to three years of submissions.

Question 5

What does Pending Status on the Referee Management Tool mean?

Accepted Answer

Pending Status - When Chambers has not yet attempted to contact your referee. We expect to reach out to this referee via email as soon as the researcher is ready to start work on this section. 

Question 6

What does In Progress status on the Referee Management Tool mean?

Accepted Answer

In Progress status – When Chambers has emailed the referee and we are early in the research process. No action is required at this stage and normally we will see referees replying to our emails in the days and weeks after we reach out. However, you will also be able to see the date our last email was sent next to the referee’s contact status, so if you are following up with your referee to notify them Chambers has reached out, you can share that information.

Question 7

What does Contacted Status on Referee Management Tool mean?

Accepted Answer

Contacted Status – When we have had a response from a referee of any kind, the tool will show that they have been successfully ‘Contacted’ to let you know our researcher has heard back from the referee. Contacted will display when:

the researcher is in touch with the referee to arrange an interview, has an appointment for an interview or has completed an interview with the referee;

the referee has completed a survey we sent to them; or

the referee has been in touch and expressed a preference not to participate or provide feedback to Chambers on this occasion.

Once Chambers is in direct contact with your referee there is no need for you to take any further action. As above, this does not guarantee an interview. We respect the privacy of all referees and their right to opt out of our research if they respond to our email to that effect.

Question 8

How do the Action Required statuses work in the Referee Management Tool?

Accepted Answer

Sometimes a situation arises which is making it difficult for us to reach a referee. The RMT is designed to notify you of when this happens via the ‘Action required’ status, so you can help us to progress in our attempts to contact them.

The ‘Action required’ status also has a sub-heading to tell you what is causing our team difficulty in reaching your referees, so you can act accordingly. There are three scenarios in which the tool may prompt you to take action:

Action required: Unsubscribed

Action required: Invalid Email
Action required: No reply

Question 9

What does Action Required: Unsubscribed in the Referee Management Tool mean?

Accepted Answer

The ‘Action required: Unsubscribed’ status will appear if, at the time you submit your referee list, our checks show that your referee has unsubscribed from receiving any research-related communication from Chambers and Partners. In these cases, our policy is not to contact the person in question without their written consent.

If you have asked this referee if they are happy to participate in our research and they have confirmed that they are, please forward the referee’s written confirmation to enquiries@chambers.com. We will then be able to update our records so your referee can be included in our research. Once we then send your referee an email, they will update to show as ‘In Progress’ or ‘Action Required: No reply’.

Question 10

What does Action Required: Invalid Email in the Referee Management Tool mean?

Accepted Answer

Action required: Invalid Email status will appear if we have received a failure notification when attempting to email them with the contact details provided to us. We recommend that you pass on our researcher’s contact details to your referee so they can email us directly if they wish to do so.

Question 11

What does Action Required: No Reply in the Referee Management Tool mean?

Accepted Answer

Action required: No Reply status will appear if we have attempted to contact your referee but by the half-way point in the research process for this section, we have not yet had any communication back from the referee in reply to our outreach. This will give you an indication of which referees you may wish to encourage to share their experiences with Chambers before the Research End Date. This gives you plenty of time to take this action before our research on your section is complete.

Question 12

What does the Referee Contact Rate on the Referee Management Tool tell me?

Accepted Answer

This is the % of the referees you provided with whom we have made successful contact and which are displaying the status ‘Contacted’ within the tool. E.g. if you sent us 20 referees and we have successfully made contact with 10 of those referees, the contact rate will show as 50%. Referee Management will help you monitor this rate in real time so that you can send reminders to those who have not responded.

Please also note that while 100% might seem like the ideal target to aim for, we find it is rare that every referee we reach out to is able to come back to us. Referees are busy people and sometimes simply don’t have a chance to respond. This is not a problem and is why we ensure each practice is afforded at least 20 referees to put forward per submission. A reasonable contact rate will likely give us lots of information to help us understand the strengths of the firm’s department and team members in a given practice area.

Question 13

Can I replace or substitute referees if I want to do so?

Accepted Answer

Law firms can make unlimited changes to their referee spreadsheets up until the point the section is set to “In Progress” (this is the first day of research for that section in particular). After this time, we do not allow any changes except for in extreme circumstances (referees move to another company at the last minute or pass away).

Please note that if we do allow changes to the referee spreadsheet in line with the above exceptions, new referees may not appear immediately in the RMT.

Question 14

What is the 3-month rule and how is it displayed in the Referee Management Tool?

Accepted Answer

Sometimes the same person is put forward to Chambers as a referee for multiple firms, or for multiple different practice areas and departments within the same firm. If that is the case, the referee will appear on RMT as either Contacted: 3-month ruling or In Progress: 3-month ruling.

This rule prevents us from contacting referees in the following three months when we have already attempted or made contact with them for a different practice area. This rule has been in place at Chambers for many years and aims to avoid “referee fatigue”, where a referee gets request after request and eventually stops responding.

In Progress: 3-month ruling

In this case the referee has been emailed in the previous three months but hasn’t provided feedback yet. Please note that where a referee has a lot of referrals, the first researcher to get to them will give the referee the chance to discuss as many firms and practice areas as they wish. The spreadsheets you send us are data-scraped into a centralised interview management system, so all researchers can see all referrals and will know they need to ask beyond their own assignment when a referee has been put forward for several different practice areas, firms and jurisdictions.

Contacted: 3-month ruling

In this case the referee has been in touch with us in the previous three months and we won’t attempt to contact them again. This referee has received and considered our request for feedback and this person should now be left in peace.

Question 15

Can I download the Referee Management Tool data?

Accepted Answer

You can now download your RMT data by clicking on the Download button, which will be located in the top-right corner of your screen on any page in the Referee Management Tool.

If you wish to download multiple practice areas at once, you can click the Download button whilst in the ‘Current’ or ‘Historic’ tab on your RMT homepage. In Current, the data extract will include the referees, contact status and contact rates for all submissions displaying in your current tab. Alternatively, if you wish to download data for only completed sections in your Historic tab, you can click the Download button whilst in the Historic view.

If you wish to download data from the above with specific filters, you can apply the desired filters and then click on the Download option in the top right of your screen and only the data included in your filters will appear in the downloaded file.

Finally, you can also quickly download the referee list and the referee contact statuses for a particular practice area you have submitted for only by clicking into that practice area and clicking the Download button in the top right of your screen from there.

Please note that whilst research is in progress the data in referee management will update frequently, so it is always best to check the tool online for the most up to date information on research start and end dates or contact statuses for any sections that are not yet complete.

Question 16

In the Referee Management Tool my referee is on Action Required: No Reply but they are saying they didn’t receive your email

Accepted Answer

If you believe any of your referees are not receiving the emails from our research team, our recommendation in these situations is always to share the email address of the researcher responsible for the section with the referee, and ask the referee to contact them directly. You can find the contact details of the researcher responsible via our Research Schedule. Here you can click on any area of our research which is currently set to ‘Researching’ and see the email address and telephone number of the person responsible. The reason we suggest the referee contact the researcher directly is that in some cases where we have sent multiple emails to the same person who apparently hasn’t received them, it is perhaps unlikely that sending another email will elicit a response. It may be the case that the email isn’t getting through for technical reasons such as spam filters.

Question 17

In the Referee Management Tool my referee was on Action Required: Unsubscribed, they agreed to be contacted again and their status is now Action Required: No Response. Why?

Accepted Answer

Once your referee is opted in again, it may take a few days for them to complete a survey or arrange an interview, that is why the status for them will turn into Action required: no response. This means that they have not provided some sort of final feedback yet, when they do, their status will turn to Contacted.

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