How the lists are made
Every list on this site is produced the same way: five checks, run on every firm, re-run every quarter. This page sets out each check and what fails it.
What every firm goes through
Regulator check
Every firm is looked up on its regulator's public register: the Solicitors Regulation Authority in England and Wales, the Law Society of Scotland, the Law Society of Northern Ireland. Authorised, current, and with no live disciplinary finding against the firm.
Track record
Years in practice, the accreditations the field actually respects, such as Legal 500 and Chambers rankings, Lexcel, the Conveyancing Quality Scheme and Resolution membership, and whether the named solicitors do this work full time.
Reputation
Reviews weighed for volume, recency and pattern, plus what the local profession says when nobody is marketing. A hundred five-star reviews in one month reads differently from a hundred across five years.
Fee transparency
Firms that publish what they charge outrank firms that make you phone for a price. In England and Wales the SRA requires published prices for several consumer services, and we check whether a firm actually does it rather than whether it says it does.
Quarterly re-evaluation
Every list carries its update date. Firms change hands, partners leave, standards slip. Nobody keeps a seat by default.
Three things on every ranked page
Rank one cleared the five checks best overall. Rank ten still cleared all five. A low rank on a list is not a warning.
Rank one is the best firm in the city. Ranks two to four are the best firm for family law, conveyancing and commercial work, in that order, so a specialist at rank two is not being ranked against rank one on the same work.
It is the date we last re-checked the firms ourselves. If it is old, treat the list as old.
The lines under a firm are what it did to earn the spot, not marketing copy it sent us.
Questions we get about the rankings
How does a firm end up on a list?
We find it. A firm that gets in touch goes into the next review round, and the five checks decide the rest.
What if a firm disagrees with its rank?
It can send us facts. If something we published is wrong we correct it the same week and note the change. If it is accurate, the rank stands until the next quarterly review.
Why are some lists shorter than others?
Because a list ends where the evidence does. We would rather publish four firms we can stand behind than pad to ten.
Does BestSolicitors make money from these lists?
Some links on the site are commercial. If you contact or instruct a firm through a link here, we may receive a commission or referral fee from that firm. It costs you nothing and does not change what you pay. The terms page has the detail.
Think a firm was judged wrongly?
Send us what we got wrong. Corrections go in ahead of everything else.