Methodology

Between June and November 2025, we reached out to general counsel and in-house attorneys at organizations across the country for their insights. Approximately 550 in-house lawyers shared feedback about their organizations’ outside law firms.

Our survey was direct. We asked counsel two simple questions: 1) “Which law firms does your company engage for legal services?” and 2) “Please indicate the highest level legal work for which your company will engage the particular firm(s).” The levels of work were defined along a four-point scale:

• Cost-efficient, bulk tasks (1)
• Routine matters (2)
• High-value, complex matters (3)
• “Bet-the-company” matters (4)

Because of the “blunt instrument” nature of our question, the resultant ratings are inapt for the purposes of an ordinal ranking. Thus, our top tier and second tier lists include the 75 firms with the highest mean ratings based on this scale, presented in alphabetical order. Only firms with a minimum threshold number of ratings were eligible for inclusion.

In addition to the overall ranking of top outside counsel, we have compiled separate lists of the top-rated law firms based on the industries and types of organizations in which in-house attorneys work.