Firm Forward

Esta semana se publicó la edición 2027 del Latin Lawyer 250. Cada septiembre nos preguntan lo mismo: qué hay que hacer para llegar a Elite.

La respuesta corta es que no se gana con una buena submission. Latin Lawyer evalúa doce criterios en tres frentes: liderazgo de mercado (recomendaciones de abogados internos a través de LACCA, representación de las 100 empresas y los 50 bancos más grandes de la región), gestión estratégica (equilibrio de género en la sociedad, proporción de socios y asociados, pro bono) y experiencia transaccional en banca y finanzas, mercados de capitales y M&A. Nadie puede pagar por entrar.

Ese diseño premia a la firma transaccional de servicio completo con clientes corporativos grandes. Una boutique de litigios o de propiedad intelectual tiene como techo realista Highly Recommended, y no por falta de calidad, sino porque los criterios miden otra cosa.

Para la firma que sí encaja, el trabajo del próximo ciclo empieza ahora y casi nada es de marketing: los abogados internos que hablan de la firma en la investigación, las cifras de gestión que la sociedad puede documentar, y las operaciones cerradas durante el año reportadas a tiempo. Mirar los doce criterios uno por uno, con honestidad, es lo que decide si la meta del 2028 es Elite o consolidarse en Highly Recommended.

There is a new IP directory as of yesterday, and it covers Latin America from its first edition. IAM and WTR, the publishing house behind Latin Lawyer and Lexology (Centellic, formerly Law Business Research), released the Copyright 1000, a guide dedicated to copyright firms and practitioners, separate from the Patent 1000 and the WTR 1000.

If your firm handles copyright work and did not submit, you are not in it. That is normal for a first edition, and it is the easiest gap to close: the researchers work from written submissions, interviews with lawyers and clients, and feedback from the market, so the firms that appear are the ones that put their work in front of them.

Two things decide a listing. For the firm, the depth and level of the copyright work it handles. For individual lawyers, enough positive feedback from people who know their market. That second one is where most firms fall short, because copyright usually lives inside the trademark group and never gets its own referee list.

If you want the firm's copyright practice recognized in the 2027 edition, the preparation starts now: a separate log of copyright matters, referees chosen for that work, and a clear decision about which jurisdictions you can credibly submit in. The full firm list and methodology are on iam-media.com under Copyright 1000.

Wishing a sweet and meaningful Rosh Hashanah to everyone in our network observing the start of the new year.

May 5787 bring good health, good work, and good news to your firm and your family.

Shanah tovah from all of us at Firm Forward.

Latin Lawyer 250 research requests start landing this month.

This directory doesn't run on a single deadline. It runs on request stages:

Stage 1, in September: client references and non-transactional submissions, with a four-week window.

Stage 2, in November: transactional submissions, one month.

Stage 3, in late February: firm data, three weeks.

What makes Latin Lawyer different is LACCA. Thousands of corporate counsel across the region contribute to the research through it, which means your ranking reflects what general counsel actually say about your firm. That makes the Stage 1 client references the most consequential part of the whole process.

If you haven't received the Stage 1 request by mid-September, check with Latin Lawyer directly.

Over the next eight months, every major legal directory covering Latin America opens its research cycle. Chambers, Legal 500, Leaders League, IP STARS, Latin Lawyer, ITR World Tax, and the specialist IP guides.

Between September and March, a well-positioned firm in the region could be looking at a dozen submission deadlines or more. Each one with its own format, its own referee rules, its own methodology.

After years of working through these cycles, a few things hold true across all of them:

Recency wins. Researchers look at your last 12 months. A strong ranking last year doesn't carry you, and last year's matters don't count twice.

Referees are a finite resource. Chambers, Legal 500, Leaders League and Latin Lawyer will all be calling your clients this cycle. Often the same clients. Decide early who speaks for which submission, or you'll burn goodwill by November.

The calendar is the strategy. Deadlines run from August through March. Firms that map the whole season now can spread the work. Firms that react deadline by deadline end up drafting submissions in December, between closings and holidays.

The first deadline of the season lands on August 14. We'll share the key dates for each directory as they come up.

Leaders League's disputes cycle closes October 23.

Leaders League runs its research in three annual cycles. Cycle III covers Dispute Resolution, Arbitration, Compliance, White-Collar Crime, Insurance and Labor, and submissions are due October 23.

For Latin America this is the deep one. Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, Peru, Uruguay, Bolivia, Costa Rica and Panama all get researched, and Brazil alone spans more than 30 categories, including regional rankings.

Two things set Leaders League apart. They gather feedback from adjacent professionals, not just clients and peers: arbitrators, expert witnesses, investigation firms. It gives them an unusually wide view of who actually leads a market. And they contact referees on behalf of their own research, never on behalf of your firm, so the feedback is spontaneous. Choosing the right referees matters more than preparing them.

Rankings from this cycle publish in February 2027.

Still waiting for your IP STARS ranking to publish? You're not behind — the schedule changed.

Starting with the 2026 edition, Managing IP no longer releases IP STARS results by practice area. Rankings now publish by jurisdiction — and the Americas release lands on July 30.

That means patents, trademarks, copyright, and transactions rankings all publish on the same day, alongside firm reviews and client testimonials. No more staggered releases throughout the year.

For ranked firms, this is actually good news: your full IP profile for the region now arrives at once — a complete picture of your practice in a single release, and a natural moment to share your results with clients and referral sources.

Mark the date: July 30.

(Corporate Stars and the Top 250 Women in IP will still publish separately.)

Chambers has launched a new Latin America DEI and Pro Bono research programme, and it is worth every firm in the region taking seriously.

The programme invites law firms, in-house teams, and individual lawyers to document the diversity, equity, inclusion, and pro bono work already underway across Latin America. It is built the way Chambers builds everything: evidence first.

The submission pairs baseline tick-box questions with free-text space for real initiatives and outcomes, so the market picture rests on what firms actually do rather than how they describe themselves. Submissions also feed the Chambers DEI and Pro Bono Awards, with the option to take part in the research alone.

For Latin American firms, this is a chance to put substantive work on the record in a market where these narratives are still being written. The firms that treat the submission as a story worth telling well are the ones who will stand out.

Bloomberg Law added a Technology and Innovation pillar to its 2026 Leading Law Firms ranking. It joins the original three and is the most consequential methodology shift in legal rankings this year.

Most firms positioning their technology investments for ranking purposes are submitting announcements. Researchers in 2026 are not reading announcements as outcomes. "We rolled out X to all attorneys in Q3 2025; matter intake time fell 31% in Q1 2026" is evidence. "We have invested in AI" is a sentence. The work this quarter is documentation: specific projects, specific dates, measurable outcomes, before-and-after data. What counts as evidence under the new tech pillar — and what doesn't.