Robert Morse, Director of Data Research at U.S. News, Some News About the New, Upcoming Best Law Firms Rankings:

Here is an update on the highly anticipated U.S. News-Best Lawyers Best Law Firms rankings, which are scheduled to be released in the October 2010 issue of U.S. News and on our website in mid-September.

Some of the highlights of the methodology of the U.S. News-Best Lawyers Best Law Firms: surveys were sent to 52,480 clients of law firms; to 43,900 practicing lawyers in the United States including every American lawyer listed in Best Lawyers; to 2,314 law firm marketing officers; to 2,322 law firm recruiting officers; to 8,597 law firms without marketing- or recruiting-office contacts; and to 2,322 associates at law firms; and 1,775 law firm summer associates.

The response has been very positive: 1,859 firms participated in the marketing-officer and recruiting-officer surveys; 9,514 clients— including every Fortune 100 company and 587 of the Fortune 1000 companies—provided 194,370 firm practice-area evaluations; 6,190 clients provided 11,181 comments about law firm practice areas and individual lawyers; and 8,842 lawyers provided 594,012 firm practice-area evaluations.

The client and lawyer surveys collected mostly reputational ratings on such areas as expertise, cost-effectiveness and responsiveness. Marketing-officer and recruiting-officer surveys provided a wide array of demographic, client and other lawyer profile data about their firms. In addition to information from these surveys, the rankings will incorporate the 3.1 million evaluation. …

Because firms were often separated by small or insignificant differences in the overall score, the Best Law Firms rankings will be published alphabetically within tiers rather than as a numerical ranking.