The Law Awards of Scotland, in association with Registers of Scotland, and The Firm are in the process of contacting 1,000s of Scottish legal clients to find out how they rate their current law firms.

Each year the contact list of clients increases to provide the widest possible pool of research. The process, unique to any Scottish legal award scheme, helps us identify which firms will be invited to enter the Law Awards of Scotland in 2010.

All firms who pass the research stage and score highly by clients will achieve Recommended Law Firm status. In order to identify the Recommended Law Firms we interview clients, research the views of the general market and canvass the opinion of lawyers themselves. Only the firms which have passed this threshold will be invited to enter the Law Awards.

To increase the chances of including clients from as many Scottish firms as possible, we are inviting firms and partners to complete a short online questionnaire which invites them to list up to five clients for us to speak to. Clients will simply be invited to score firms on a number of criteria including; quality of legal service, value for money, accessibility, clarity of advice, understanding of objectives, problem solving and overall professionalism. The questionnaire can be completed here.

Any information provided will be only used for the purposes of this research. All research will be done under Market Research Society guidelines and the detailed scores or data will not be passed on to third parties.

Separate peer to peer research is underway in addition to our poll of members of the Faculty of Advocates to provide a full spectrum of responses.