.jpg?sfvrsn=8011105d_1 "Editorial team makes misconduct public: Juventus rankings agreed?")
The announcement is likely to cause quite a stir in the legal market: on Wednesday The editor-in-chief of the industry magazine Juve made it public that a member of the editorial team had apparently sent reviews in ranking entries to the law firms concerned in advance. In its annual rankings, the magazine evaluates which law firms are the best in their field. “Each ranking is based on extensive research among law firms, company managers, government officials and employees from the judiciary and science. The editorial team, which works strictly independently, now draws on 25 years of experience in the legal market,” it says on the Juve website.
This self-image could now be damaged. “At the beginning of this week, we discovered that a member of our editorial team had violated the internal editorial standards for the creation and journalistic independent evaluation of our ranking publications,” the magazine said. “It is important to us, because we are committed to transparency in the market, to make this process public.”
According to the statement, “at least one law firm” had a review entry concerning them submitted for a vote before publication. “This contradicts the principles of independent research and reporting that JUVE has practiced for over 25 years and is a gross violation of our quality standards.” The violation affects a ranking that has not yet been published. In the message, the editor-in-chief also calls on law firms to actively contact the editorial team if they too have been suggested that agreements are being made.
Several law firms responded to the editorial team’s call
Several law firms have already complied with this in the course of the afternoon, as Juve editor-in-chief Jörn Poppelbaum confirmed in an interview with beck-aktuell: “We cannot currently say an exact number as to how many law firms are affected. However, we are currently assuming this for various reasons that it is in the single digits.” He did not want to make public which ranking was involved in the case and whether others were also affected. But it’s just about rankings that have not yet been published.
Specifically, the editorial member in question is said to have sent the ranking entries to law firms in advance “for review and, if necessary, additions”. At the beginning of the week, a law firm actively contacted the editorial board and pointed out the unusual process. According to Poppelbaum, the editor-in-chief is currently investigating whether other law firms, which apparently also received the entries in advance, changed texts and sent them back to the editorial member. “However, the texts were still at an early stage, i.e. before the content editing and proofreading phases,” he says.
Editors assume this is a one-off incident
Despite the incident, it is believed that journalistic misconduct did not occur in previous, published rankings, said Poppelbaum. “We assume that something like this has not happened in the past and that the editorial member in question only changed this way in the last few days. This is about a few days and very recent research.” In previous rankings, there was never any evidence of agreements or discrepancies discovered in texts.
“We have a clear conscience and know that we have met our quality standards so far,” emphasized Poppelbaum. “We also know that some have always doubted our rankings and will now feel confirmed. But you cannot influence our rankings.” That’s precisely why, says Poppelbaum, the editorial team is very concerned and is now trying to achieve the greatest possible transparency with the early announcement. “We received a lot of support for this in the first few hours after publication.”
In their announcement, the editor-in-chief also spoke of the consequences that had already been drawn. According to Poppelbaum, this initially means that the editorial member in question has been removed from all research for rankings. He is currently unable to comment on further consequences in view of the internal investigations.
It is also not yet clear whether the way in which the rankings are created will have to be fundamentally changed in the future. “We are now analyzing what exactly happened and will then decide to what extent the editorial processes need to be revised,” explained Poppelbaum. The affected ranking entries will now be identified and completely recreated.
Editorial team beck-aktuell, Maximilian Amos, April 17, 2024.