One of the aspects we've tried to improve with Legal Week in recent years is finding more opportunities to work collaboratively with outside organisations and publications. That was a conscious decision. One of the best things about the legal profession is a sense of community. One of the worst things about the legal profession is that sense of community can at times translate into a sort of default bitching and back-biting.

So finding chances to work with other titles and information providers seemed one way of getting away from that negative aspect and towards something more constructive. Some of these arrangements are formal and some ad hoc, in recent years covering parties as diverse as mergermarket, RSG Consulting, Adam Smith Esq., American Lawyer Media, RollOnFriday, Deloitte and a large roster of legal bloggers.

Extending this approach, we've decided to put our relationship with the legal directory and research business Chambers and Partners on a 'preferred partner' footing, in a similar way we work with mergermarket for deal statistics. That means we intend to use Chambers as an on-the-record reference tool where relevant in our coverage, particularly with longer pieces, commentary and international reporting.

I know legal directories arouse some strong feelings in the industry – and I'll receive another bout of moaning from law firms – but we remain of the view that the major players do a good job and bring additional transparency to a fragmented market.

In my personal view, Chambers in particular has made real strides in expanding its reach and moving to bring more rigour and client input to its research process.

Legal publications and journalists have always used directories, so putting that reference tool as on-the-record citation feels like a more mature approach. Aside from regularly using Chambers' published work, we will look to draw on senior researchers for comment and input.

Of course, like any benchmark they have to be used intelligently and in proper context (which is more than you can say for the way law firms typically mangle deal rankings). Overall, we believe drawing on Chambers' research will provide a useful extra dimension to our coverage.

There are lot of people out there producing interesting and insightful material on the legal industry – hopefully we'll find a few more people to work with in the years ahead.