Introduction
Legal awards acknowledge the market recognition of a law firm and lawyer’s success, ability, effort and, above all, excellence.
While rankings consider the accumulation of a firm or lawyer’s efforts year-on-year, awards represent the achievements of firms or lawyers during the past 12 months. Awards can be viewed as being more significant than rankings because being shortlisted or winning an award means a firm or lawyer is one of a very select number of parties considered to be “the best”.
Legal Media 360’s Awards Reports consolidate the nominations and winners of the most reputable international and regional awards, showcasing the top performers by jurisdiction.
Methodology
Atomic awards data is categorized, and naming conventions standardized. This highlights which firms, lawyers, cases and deals are receiving the greatest recognition via a nomination/win ratio.
Awards data from the following sources are used in our research:
Asian Legal Business, ALM, asialaw, Benchmark Litigation, China Business Law Journal, Chambers and Partners, China Law and Practice, India Business Law Journal, International Financial Law Review, In-house Community, Legal 500, Managing IP.
The awards period used for our research is January to December 2022.
AWARD CATEGORIES
Legal Media 360’s awards analysis splits firm awards into two distinct categories: Firm awards and Case/deal awards.
Firm awards
Firm awards include categories such as practice area specific awards, practice management, diversity and inclusion and firm-wide awards (such as firm of the year).
Table 1: Top 20 firms by highest number of firm award nominations
Commentary:
The above tables show that Zhong Lun Law Firm was undoubtedly the leader in firm awards in 2022, with the greatest number of nominations and wins. Credit should also be given to Anjie Law Firm, Jincheng Tongda & Neal, East & Concord and Shihui Partners for having the best nomination-to-win ratio of the top 20 firms.
Case/deal awards
Case/deal awards recognise the firms working on the most significant matters in the past 12 months.
Table 2: Top 20 firms by highest number of award nominations
Commentary: King & Wood Mallesons was nominated the greatest number of times and won one in every five awards for which it was nominated. Haiwen & Partners had the highest nomination-to-win ratio winning almost two in every five awards for which it was nominated.
Lawyer awards
In the 12 publications examined, a total of 86 lawyers in China were nominated for awards.
69 male lawyers were nominated, compared with only 17 female lawyers. The gender ratio of male-female lawyer nominations is 80 to 20 percent.
Nine out of 86 lawyers won awards. Only one female won an award.
Nomination Statistics
Table 3: Firms with the highest number of lawyer award nominations
Table 4: Lawyers with the highest number of award nominations
Winner Statistics
Table 5: Firms with the highest number of lawyer award wins
Table 6: Lawyer award winners
Commentary: 26 firms had lawyers nominated for awards in 2022. The nine lawyers that won awards were from six firms. Zhong Lun Law Firm had the most success with one in three nominated lawyers winning an award. This is followed by Han Kun Law Offices with one in four nominated lawyers winning.
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