Client Service Survey 2021

The Legal 500 Client Service Survey

The Legal 500 Client Service Survey is the largest and most comprehensive survey of client satisfaction ever conducted of the UK legal market.

Every year, Legal 500 research contacts more than 150,000 clients to access their views on the service they have received from law firms. Generating over half a million data points, that survey enables us to analyse law firm client satisfaction objectively – and find out what clients really think of the service they get from the legal teams they use.

Extracts from the client service survey data from 2020 are available now at legal500.com, accompanying our rankings and editorial coverage. Research towards the 2021 edition, available this Autumn, has already begun. When completed it will be the biggest and most exhaustive study of client attitudes towards the service they have received from law firms ever conducted in the UK.

The Legal 500’s analysis, which is not available anywhere else, will be available in two formats:


  • A web front-end (allows easy interrogation of the data on-screen)

  • A PDF Report (with commentary from The Legal 500 Editorial team) analysing the findings in relation to various categories and groupings of firms. Each report is personalised to focus on the data (and firm peer groups) relevant to the firm buying the report

All Legal 500 Client Service Reports are prepared to statistically valid standards, facilitated by the unparalleled access to the vast datasets generated in the course of our annual research. That allows us, uniquely, to establish UK-wide benchmarks for client service and build scientific indicators of relative law firm performance, measured against the entire market and within specific peer groups.

The Legal 500 also offers Bespoke Client Service Reports for individual firms. These reports allow individual firms to compare their own performance – and the performance of individual departments and work groups – with those of a group of comparable firms (UK or overseas). These reports are confidential to the buying/customer firm. For more information on our bespoke reporting service please contact clientservice@legal500.com.

To get more details on client service strengths and weaknesses for your firm, please visit our benchmark quote page.

The Client Service criteria are:

  • Appropriate Resourcing
  • Billing: Transparency
  • Billing: Value for Work Done
  • Communication & Case/Matter Management
  • Consistency of service provided to clients
  • Efficiency in Delivering the Legal Product
  • Industry/Commercial Knowledge of the Sector
  • Lawyers/Team Quality
  • Partner Availability & Engagement
  • Profile in the Industry
  • Quality of Associates
  • Quality of Partners
  • Value (Billing & Efficiency)
  • Overall Client Service ScoreTM