Say you’re working in-house at a prominent, profitable company, and you’ve got a major legal problem on your hands. It’s a bet-the-company litigation matter, 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 study that was recently released by BTI Consulting Group, we now know.
As noted by BTI’s Mad Clientist blog, peer recommendations rank among the most important factors when securing legal representation, with 86% of all law firm/client relationships starting with an unprompted recommendation. Unfortunately, these referral rates have dropped dramatically in recent years. Law360 has additional details:
The report, based on interviews with over 500 corporate legal decision-makers conducted between June and December 2024, found that less than 28% would recommend their primary outside counsel to a peer — a sharp decline from 69% four years ago. …
In an interview with Law360 Pulse, BTI President Michael Rynowecer said that the decline in referral rates indicates law firms are failing to meet client expectations, with this dissatisfaction prompting clients to explore alternatives.
“Fundamentally, this says that client expectations are different than what law firms are delivering, and that is never an ongoing good thing,” Rynowecer added. He also noted that clients are increasingly demanding law firms to be proactive — anticipating problems and acting swiftly — especially in the face of new, urgent challenges.
Without any further ado, these are the 23 firms that earned the most recommendations overall from corporate counsel, despite that downward tick in referrals (in alphabetical order):
Arnold & Porter
Baker McKenzie
Cooley
DLA Piper
Faegre Drinker
Gibson Dunn
Goodwin
Greenberg Traurig
Hogan Lovells
Jackson Lewis
Jones Day
King & Spalding
Kirkland & Ellis
Latham & Watkins
Littler
Morgan Lewis
Morrison & Foerster
Ogletree Deakins
Reed Smith
Ropes & Gray
Seyfarth
Sidley
Skadden
Congratulations to all of the firms that continue to be recommended by their corporate clients. 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 Single Out 23 Most Recommended Law Firms [Mad Clientist / BTI Consulting Group]
23 Firms Remain GC’s Top Picks Despite Referral Drop [Law360]
Staci 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 Bluesky, X/Twitter, and Threads, or connect with her on LinkedIn.
