Changes to Referee Rules in Europe 2025

As we are looking ahead into Europe 2025 research cycle and following the success of the referee trials for Europe 2024, we have decided to extend the referee trials to cover more practice areas and more jurisdictions. This will allow firms to further showcase the depth of the team.

Please find below the full list of sections now covered by the trial, grouped by country: 

Austria - Banking & Finance, Corporate / M&A, Dispute Resolution

Belgium - Banking & Finance, Competition / European Law, Corporate / M&A, Dispute Resolution

Bulgaria - Corporate / Commercial, Dispute Resolution

Czech Republic - Banking & Finance, Corporate / M&A, Dispute Resolution

Denmark - Banking & Finance, Corporate / M&A, Dispute Resolution

Finland - Banking & Finance, Corporate / M&A, Dispute Resolution

Greece - Banking & Finance, Corporate / Commercial, Dispute Resolution

Hungary - Corporate / M&A, Dispute Resolution

Ireland* - Banking & Finance, Corporate / M&A, Dispute, Resolution, Real Estate

Italy - Banking & Finance, Corporate / M&A, Dispute Resolution, Employment, Tax

Liechtenstein - Corporate / Commercial, Dispute Resolution

Luxembourg - Banking & Finance, Corporate / M&A

Netherlands - Banking & Finance, Corporate / M&A, Litigation, Arbitration

Norway - Banking & Finance, Corporate / M&A, Dispute Resolution

Poland - Banking & Finance, Corporate / M&A, Dispute Resolution

Portugal - Banking & Finance, Corporate / M&A, Dispute Resolution

Romania - Corporate / M&A, Dispute Resolution

Serbia - Corporate / Commercial, Dispute Resolution

Slovakia - Banking & Finance, Corporate / M&A, Dispute Resolution

Spain - Banking & Finance, Corporate / M&A, Dispute Resolution

Sweden - Banking & Finance, Corporate / M&A, Dispute Resolution

Switzerland - Corporate / M&A, Banking & Finance, Litigation, Arbitration

Turkey - Corporate / M&A, Litigation, Arbitration

Firms can provide a maximum of 5 referees per lawyer, and can submit a maximum of 30 referees total for the law firm;

For example, if you wish to provide referees for 10 lawyers it may have to be 3 referees per lawyer.

If you have fewer than six lawyers in the team, please only provide 5 referees per lawyer rather than a total of 30, i.e. a firm with 5 lawyers should provide 25 referees rather than 30.

Please fill in column N “Referring Lawyer(s)” on the referee spreadsheet to indicate for whom that referee is providing feedback. If the required information is not provided, then we may not contact the referee/s.

Firms can only assign 1 lawyer to each referee on the spreadsheet (i.e., the referee’s main contact person in the department), bearing in mind that our researchers will always ask referees about every lawyer with whom they have worked during the review period.

To learn more about the referee trial for Chambers Europe 2024 and the results, please click here.

*For Ireland, firms can upload a maximum of 5 referees per ranked lawyer, and a maximum of 10 additional referees in total for unranked lawyers.

For example, if a firm has three ranked lawyers, they can submit a total of 25 referees: 

Lawyers in the department - Maximum number of referees permitted 

Ranked lawyer A - 5 

Ranked lawyer B - 5 

Ranked lawyer C  - 5 

Unranked lawyers  - 10 

Please note that this trial does not affect the format of the submission document; a maximum of 20 work highlights per submission document still applies. 

If your country and practice area is not listed above, the research will continue as normal: we will accept 20 referees per law firm per practice area and a submission with up to 20 work highlights.  

Should you have any questions, please do get in touch with Magdalena Parkitna on [email protected]. If you have any questions about the referee trials in Ireland, please contact Thomas Morton-Green on [email protected]