Legal News

Happy, Happy, Joy, Joy! U.S. News to Rank the Law Firms

By Ashby Jones

Wellll, won’t this be fun?

US News & World Report, in connection with the folks who bring you the Best Lawyers survey, have announced that they’ll soon be, yes, ranking the best law firms. (We can feel law-firm marketing directors getting a little twitchy already.)

Click here for the U.S. News press release. According to the release:

The U.S. News/Best Lawyers Law Firm rankings will evaluate more than 3,000 law firms across the United States using a wide range of objective data as well as individual assessments from more than 40,000 private practice lawyers, 20,000 clients, and thousands of law firm employees. The results of this evaluation, as well as articles about legal careers and the law, will be featured in a variety of print and online products focused on both consumers and legal professionals

We checked in with a spokesperson at Best Lawyers, who told us that it’s actually going to be two surveys — the best law firms and the best law firms to work for. The best law firms survey, at least, will be based partly on a survey sent to lawyers, general counsel and others, and partly on hard data. They’re still apparently working on nailing down the criteria they plan to use.

The inaugural results of the survey are slated to be unveiled in the fall of 2010 (we’ve already marked it on our calendar.) A slight dose of bad news (or good news, if you’re at a firm that doesn’t fare too well): the full results of the survey are scheduled to run online only, not in the magazine itself.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on July 07, 2009 (boomark / email).