UK A-List

2024 UK A-List: Methodology

To be named one of top 20 firms on the prestigious UK A-List, Law.com International starts with the four different surveys that rate firms' performance for the previous fiscal year: UK Top 50/Global 200, UK Diversity Survey, UK Pro Bono Survey, and the UK Associate survey. Firm rankings are converted to points by inverting the score. The values are then weighted to find the overall scores. The following are the five components of The UK A-List: Revenue per Lawyer, Pro Bono, Diversity, Percentage of Women Partners, and UK Associate Satisfaction. 2024 is the first year that UK Associate Satisfaction has been factored into the UK A-List.

The true UK A-List consists of the first 20 ranked firms as published by Law.com International.  The entire list for 2024 (2023 data) is comprised of 93 firms and is available on ALM Legal Compass, however, firms 21-93 are listed as relative ranking and shown for illustrative purposes only.

REVENUE PER LAWYER (RPL) RANKINGS take into account a firms global RPL for the previous year reported in The UK Top 50, AM Law 200, and/or Global 200 report. If needed, a firms RPL was converted to pounds using the average year-end 2023 HMRC exchange rate. A firms rank for RPL is inverted to come up with its points for the UK A-List. For example, the number one firm gets 93 points, and the 93rd firm receives one point.

PRO BONO RANKINGS come from the UK Pro Bono Survey. The rankings for the Pro Bono list are inverted to come up with point values for the UK A-List, as described for the RPL points, above.

DIVERSITY RANKINGS come from the UK Diversity Survey. Participating firms are ranked by the percentage of UK lawyers from a minority group. To stress the importance of hiring and promoting minority attorneys to partnership positions, the diversity score was created by adding the minority percentage of all UK attorneys at the firms surveyed to the minority percentage of all UK partners at those firms.

WOMEN PARTNERS rankings come from UK Diversity Survey, and are based on the percentage of firms UK women during the prior year. The rankings for women partners are inverted to come up with the point values for the UK A-List, as described above for RPL points.

UK ASSOCIATES rankings come from the prior years UK Associate Satisfaction survey. For example, the data from the 2024 UK Associate Satisfaction survey is factored into the 2024 UK A-List.

Firms that did not participate in one or more of the other surveys did not receive any points for those surveys.

To develop the overall UK A-List score, Law.com International doubled the points for both revenue per lawyer and pro bono and added them to the points for diversity and women partners. Firms were then ranked by their total scores. Only the top 20 form The UK A-List.

THE FORMULA FOR THE UK A-LIST RANKINGS

The 2024 UK A-List (based on 2023 data) is comprised of 93 firms.

Firms scores per the four criteria described above are based on their ranks in each survey result. To obtain a score of 1-93 for each criterion, the ranks are subtracted from 94. The scores for each criterion, and the final overall UK A-List score, are normalized (converted to a range of 1-100 points).

Example:

A pro bono rank of 14. To convert to a score of 1-93: 94-14= 80 points for pro bono. Normalized to a range of 1 100 this becomes a pro bono score of 86.0 (80/93 * 100 =86).

An RPL rank of 34. To convert to a score of 1-93: 94-34= 60 points for RPL. Normalized to a range of 1 100 this becomes an RPL score of 64.5 (60/93 * 100 = 64.5).

In this example, assume the firm had the following scores for the remaining criteria: 75.0 for diversity, 25.0 for women partners, and 80.0 for associate satisfaction.

To determine an overall score, sum the results of the four criteria, giving double weight to pro bono and RPL scores:

(86 * 2) + (64.5 * 2) + 75.0 + 25.0 + 80.0 = 481

To normalize the score of 481.0 to a range of 1 100, divide the overall score by a possible score of 700 and multiply by 100. This results in a Total UK A-List score of 63.2. (481/700 * 100 = 68.7)

The firms are then ranked by their Total UK A-List Score.