Kerry G. Benn
When the Law360 data team started this project, we wanted to look beyond the financials and take a holistic view of law firms, assessing them across a broad range of categories to highlight what they're doing well and what they could improve. The goal was to come up with a totally new way for readers to visualize what makes a strong, successful law firm. Earlier this year, we identified a list of 10 attributes — everything from pro bono work to deal making to litigation breadth to financials — that would show readers what they'd want to know about the strengths and weaknesses of a particular firm, if, say, they were seeking work there or looking to hire outside counsel.
We've done this with data from our Law360 Pulse surveys — collected directly from the firms we're ranking and attorneys at those firms — and from our parent company, LexisNexis, which has been gathering data on the law and the legal industry for decades. We are giving the results to you, our readers, with analysis and insights into what it means to be a successful law firm.
The Leaderboard is the third and final part of our new ranking. Here, we take firms' scores for Social Impact and Prestige and combine them with a third score based on two elements: the value of deals they've worked on in the past three years and their litigation reach over that same time period. For the third score, we relied on data from Intelligize and Lex Machina.
The goal is to give you, our readers, a brand-new, fully rounded picture of what makes a successful law firm.
This project is a work in progress, and something we hope to expand and deepen in the coming years with new data points as they become available to us. We welcome your feedback, which you can send to us at surveys@law360.com.
Thanks for coming along on this journey with us!
Kerry G. Benn
Director of Series, Surveys and Data
Law360 Pulse
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