City trio get the client vote but GCs want more ground on billing

683 clients respond to Legal Week research: advisers deliver on quality and service but alternative billing still a work in progress

Lovells, SJ Berwin and Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer have received strong client endorsement in a Legal Week research project ranking law firms according to feedback from the UK's largest companies.

The trio were among the most highly-rated practices within a league of the UK's 20 largest law firms in Legal Week Intelligence's sixth annual Client Satisfaction Report.

The flagship project from Legal Week's independent research arm includes rankings of 43 UK and US practices based on responses from 873 senior in-house lawyers and finance directors at 683 different companies operating in the UK, including 60% of the FTSE 100.

Clients graded firms on six primary criteria: quality of legal advice; quality of commercial advice; cost/billing practice; service delivery/responsiveness; use of IT; and personal/partner relationships.

Lovells was the highest ranked practice within the UK top 20, receiving an average score of 8.6 out of 10.

SJ Berwin, which three years ago handed corporate partner Simon Witney a special brief to canvas the views of senior clients, was another standout performer, with the firm receiving some of the strongest feedback in the survey for service delivery (9.2 out of 10).

SJ Berwin managing partner Ralph Cohen said: "We do work very hard on client satisfaction and make sure that we act on the feedback we receive from our clients. I am delighted to hear that it has paid off. It is about developing a relationship of trust with clients based on delivering good service."

Freshfields and Slaughter and May were the highest ranked magic circle firms, both receiving an average grade from clients of 8.2 out of 10. Both firms were particularly highly-regarded by clients for quality of legal advice.

"We have placed a lot of emphasis on building the relationship partner role and that has been key to our success," said Tim Jones, Freshfields' London management chair.

Jones added: "In a funny way, clients are now more interested in establishing deeper relationships - partly because the deals that we are doing just now mean a lot to them but also because driving more volume through fewer firms may deliver pricing advantage."

The report also for the first time canvassed clients on law firms' commitment to alternative billing methods. The research found wide discrepancies between individual practices and a general dissatisfaction among clients with firms' efforts in this area.

While six firms received a rating of 6 or more out of 10 for alternative billing, 22 firms were given a grade of less than 5 out of 10, including the entire magic circle. The highest ranked firm for alternative billing was Cobbetts with a grade of 7.3.

The findings will be taken as evidence that, despite calls for firms to move away from hourly charge-out rates in response to the recession, alternative billing has yet to become mainstream in commercial legal services.

The research, conducted in September and October, also found substantial divergences between clients' satisfaction with their advisers' performance across different areas.

While clients believe major firms operating in the UK offer a very high standard of legal advice and service delivery, they remain less happy on cost issues and use of technology. With a handful of exceptions, top City firms received below-average ratings on cost/billing issues.

However, some clients argued that top tier advisers have become more responsive on costs. Rio Tinto managing attorney Leah Cooper said: "Sure, magic circle firms are expensive, but many times you get great value for their fees. It's about going to them for the right type of work - and getting that call right is the responsibility of the general counsel."

The full report will be published at the end of November. The report contains individual rankings for 43 practices, including extended profiles for the largest 20 firms.

For more information on the Client Satisfaction Report, contact Paul Birk on 0207 316 9864 or email paul.birk@incisivemedia.com.

For more analysis, see Editor's comment: Job well done