Last month, we mentioned the plans of Chambers and Partners, the U.K.-based publisher of law firm guides, to launch an online guide to U.S. law firms called Chambers Associate. Already well-known for its rankings of top firms in different practice areas — which firms love to tout in their PR materials, since they’re always good news — Chambers now seeks to supplement its coverage with a resource for law students and laterals.

The Chambers Associate site is now live. Enter a firm’s name in the search box to find its profile, or use the advanced search feature to find firms by region, practice area, or some other criterion.

How does Chambers Associate compare to other resources in the market? The field is already crowded, with players such as Vault and the new ATL / Lateral Link Career Center. Editor Michael Lovatt, whom we met at the NALP conference, explained Chambers Associate:

The emphasis we have gone for is away from the Vault prestige ranking model, and toward the notion that there isn’t a ‘best’ firm, rather that an individual’s specific interests and ambitions make different firms — with their various cultures, policies, practice strengths and identities — the right fit.

Getting law students and lawyers to look beyond prestige, in a profession as status-obsessed as the law, may be a challenge. But at least Chambers has done its homework:

For each firm, we write an overview based on the detailed practice area rankings from Chambers USA, then write 10 sections of editorial based on anonymous telephone interviews with a random, representative sample of junior associates at that firm. It’s an in-depth, substantive approach that we think gets under the skin of law firms in more detail than any other publication.

Present company excluded, of course; here at ATL, we pride ourselves on the ability to “get[] under the skin of law firms.” We checked out a few of the Chambers Associate profiles, and they struck us as comprehensive, if a bit tilted towards the positive.

Press release, after the jump.

Elyse DiPierri, sales and marketing director for Above the Law, at the NALP conference booth for ATL (booth #53 — feel free to drop by if you’re here).

Greetings from Washington, host city for the 2009 annual education conference of the National Association for Law Placement (NALP). We’ve been down in our former stomping grounds since Tuesday. The conference started yesterday and will continue into Saturday.

We attended a number of very interesting events yesterday — and participated in a fun and lively plenary panel, entitled “Don’t Fight the Web: Surviving and Thriving in a 2.0 World” — and we will be filing a few reports on the proceedings. Although we understand that there are fewer attendees this year, which is understandable in light of the economic crisis, the conference still appears to be well-attended (standing room only at several panels, including our plenary).

In addition to attending events, catching up with old friends, and networking up a storm, we’ve been manning the Above the Law booth in the exhibition hall. Check out a slideshow of booth photos — featuring ATL swag, as well as our lovely and amazing advertising sales director, Elyse DiPierri — after the jump.

Okay, they’re not really “new”; they were issued last month, which is when we started getting blast emails from law firms touting their strong showings. But as TaxProf Blog recently reminded us, the influential Chambers USA rankings, of law firms and individual attorneys, are now available.

If you’re not familiar with them, the Chambers rankings are explained well in this New York Observer piece, from 2005, by Anna Schneider-Mayerson:

In a market choked with legal directories consisting solely of the dry vitae and coordinates of the top practitioners, the [Chambers USA guide], a real doorstop at nearly 1,500 pages, has a colorful Zagat-style take on the field. It not only ranks the top dogs in each field of law, pitting them against each other in neat little blue charts, it also assesses the lawyers who make it onto its lists, complete with coddling commentary from clients and peers…. It’s perfect for lawyers: rational and ordered, yet gossipy in its own guarded and libel-checked way. And taken as a whole, it’s becoming the field guide par excellence to Manhattan’s legal set.

If you have any thoughts on this year’s rankings — who was justly praised, who got shafted, who’s overrated, who received amusing / snarky comments from reviewers — feel free to share, in this open thread.

Chambers USA law firm and lawyer rankings [official website]
Law Firm Corporate Tax Rankings [TaxProf Blog]
I’ll See You in Chambers! Lawyers Ga-Ga for Guide [New York Observer]