Biglaw, In-House Counsel

The Biglaw Firms That General Counsel Recommended Most During The Pandemic (2021)

A ranking of the law firms that successfully guided their clients through the most turbulent time of our lives.

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Say you’re working in-house at a prominent, profitable company, and you’ve got a major legal problem on your hands. To make matters even worse, the world is facing down a pandemic. It’s a bet-the-company case, and you’re not quite sure which law firm to choose to handle the issue. You turn to a colleague for advice, and luckily enough, they’re ready to make a recommendation to you on the spot thanks to one firm’s superior client service.

Unprompted recommendations from legal decision makers in the corporate world are like liquid gold for law firms. Just one unprompted recommendation can lead to an attorney/client relationship that can last for decades, prompting more and more such recommendations, leading to more and more satisfied clients (not to mention more and more money for the recommended law firms).

But which law firms receive the most unprompted recommendations? Thanks to a new report that was just released by BTI Consulting Group, we now know.

Before we get to that, let’s delve into some of the details from the report. According to BTI, the power of the recommendation is a real success driver for outside counsel. Why’s that? Here’s some pertinet information from BTI Consulting Group’s Mad Clientist blog:

Virtually every top legal decision maker looks to peer recommendations when first thinking of hiring a new law firm. Up to 64% of these decision makers hires the first firm recommended — even if this firm is recommended just once — hence the power of the unprompted recommendation. …

Superior client service is consistently the leading driver of law firm recommendations by General Counsel. Superior service accounts for nearly 4 times more recommendations (75%) than any other single factor.

Without any further ado, these are the 11 firms that have been the most recommended by corporate counsel in 2021 (in alphabetical order):

Arnold & Porter
King & Spalding
DLA Piper
Latham & Watkins
Eversheds Sutherland
Littler
Foley & Lardner
McDermott Will & Emery
Gibson Dunn
McGuireWoods
Jones Day

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A dedication to superior client service has essentially been baked into the firm culture at the most recommended firms. In an interview with Law360 (sub. req.), BTI president Michael Rynowecer said, “Most law firms responded well to client needs during the pandemic, but some were just exceptional. If you’re going to recommend a law firm to appear in an unprompted manner that requires an investment of your personal stamp of approval, you’re not going to make that as a corporate counsel or top legal decision maker unless you have very high confidence and tremendous respect combined for these firms.”

Congratulations to all of the firms that have been recommended by their corporate clients during these unpredecented times. If you want your firm to someday be among those on this list, then it would be a good idea to encourage attorneys to intimately get to know your clients’ business, and then show them how deep your understanding of their business really is — after all, that’s all they really want from their attorneys. Try it out sometime and reap the rewards.

Clients Recommend 140 Law Firms Above All Others [BTI Consulting Group]

Staci ZaretskyStaci Zaretsky is a senior editor at Above the Law, where she’s worked since 2011. She’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to email her with any tips, questions, comments, or critiques. You can follow her on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn.

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