What do clients really think about the service they receive from law firms?

At Legal 500, we hear thoughts from hundreds of thousands of clients every year, rating firms on various key metrics such as individual quality, availability, billing, communication and expertise.

This provides an objective and unbiased set of responses, allowing us to evaluate firms using a set of client service data scores. Our specific criteria include Lawyers and Team Quality, Value: Billing and Efficiency, and Sector and Industry Knowledge – all of which combine to produce an Overall Client Service Score.

Gowling WLG’s preview post here focuses solely on Lawyers and Team Quality, where the firm scores 80.33.

As shown in the scatter graph above, Gowling WLG is in the 10-20%, ie second-lowest, decile of the Global 100 for Lawyers and Team Quality. This absolute score is nonetheless better than comparators including Eversheds Sutherland, but falls behind comparators including Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner and CMS.

Firm performance can also be displayed relative to the market average, or benchmark. Although Gowling WLG outscored Eversheds Sutherland in absolute terms, both firms – along with Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner and CMS – were still below the Global 100 benchmark for Lawyers and Team Quality.

Lawyers and Team Quality is the average of sub-criteria scores attained for Quality of partners, Quality of associates and Partner availability and engagement, and we scrutinise these in exactly the same way.

Gowling WLG’s Partner availability and engagement is 0.32% below the Global 100 benchmark of 84.44, which provides more relative context to its absolute score of 84.12. Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner, CMS and Eversheds Sutherland all score below the benchmark too, but to varying lower degrees.

Gowling WLG’s Quality of associates is 3.60% below the Global 100 benchmark of 77.02, which provides more relative context to its absolute score of 73.42. On this occasion, the firm fares less well compared to Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner and Eversheds Sutherland, with CMS actually ahead of the benchmark.

Absolute and relative benchmark scoring for our other criteria (Value: Billing and Efficiency, and Sector and Industry Knowledge), all sub-criteria and Overall Client Service are also available. In addition, Legal 500 offers comprehensive client satisfaction reporting not only for the Global 100 sample, but also from a worldwide, jurisdictional, country-by-country, office or practice area perspective.

If you would like to know more, please contact our sales team, who can provide more information about what is available for your firm, at researchreports@legal500.com. We also welcome any feedback on The Client’s View series and our client service scoring.