How we build our lawyer lists

The process at a glance

1. Finding candidates

A list starts with a wide net. For each city, and for each type of case on a practice area list, we gather law firms from:

• Google Maps results for medical malpractice lawyers in and around the city
• Google search results for the city and the type of case
• State bar and provincial law society directories
• Firms that ask to be considered through our consideration form

Being found isn't the same as being listed. Most candidates don't make a list, usually because their own website doesn't show enough medical malpractice work.

2. Verifying each firm

3. Collecting evidence

For every verified firm we collect evidence you can check yourself, and we link all of it.

• Client reviews: the Google rating, the number of reviews, the themes that come up again and again, and short quotes attributed to the reviewer and linked to the review.
• Results: verdicts and settlements the firm publishes. We link to the source and label them as reported by the firm. We do not treat a result as confirmed unless a court record or a news report backs it up.
• Community discussion: what people say about the firm on Reddit, including local subreddits, linked to the thread. These are individual experiences, not verified facts, and we present them that way.
• Practical details: the lawyers who handle malpractice, their years in practice, languages spoken, and whether the firm offers a free consultation and works on contingency.

4. Scoring

Each verified firm is scored out of 100 on six factors. The weights are the same on every list, and each firm shows its total and the points it earned on each factor. The scored firms on a list appear in score order.

What never counts toward a score

• Whether a firm pays us for a featured spot
• Whether a firm contacted us or asked to be considered
• Advertising spend, website design or search ranking
• Awards that a firm can buy or nominate itself for

Our lists do not describe lawyers as specialists or experts, because many bars restrict those words. A score is our assessment of the evidence we could verify. It is not a guarantee of any result.

5. Writing and quality checks

Each list is written from the verified evidence. Before it can go up, it has to pass automated checks:

• At least five verified firms
• Every factual claim tied to a source
• No words that bar advertising rules restrict, such as specialist or expert
• Not too similar to the lists for nearby cities
• The Featured label and its one-line disclosure on every list with a featured partner
• A check for writing that reads as formulaic or machine-made
• Length within range, and every link working

A list that fails any check is held until the problem is fixed. If a city doesn't have five firms that pass, we cover it in a list for the wider metro area or region instead.

Keeping lists current

We re-verify every list each quarter: license status, offices, reviews, published results and links. Each list shows when it was last updated and last verified. A firm that no longer passes is removed at the next update, or sooner if we learn of a problem.

The Featured spot

A featured partner pays to appear first on lists in its market, labeled Featured, and every other position comes from our scoring.

On those lists the partner is item 1, with a one-line disclosure under its card, and the scored firms start at number 2. If the partner's firm also earned a scored spot, we show it once, in the featured spot. Our featured partner in Canada is Diamond & Diamond. Every way we make money is on our disclosures page, and law firms can read about featured placement.

How we use AI

AI tools help us research candidate firms, pull facts out of the sources we collect and draft each list from those sources. AI never adds a fact that isn't in our sources, and every list still has to pass the checks above. Our AI policy has the details.

How a firm can ask to be considered

It's free. Any firm can ask us to look at it by sending the details we need to verify it. The methodology decides the outcome, so a request does not guarantee a place, and firms don't approve or edit what we write.

Corrections

If something on a list is wrong, tell us at [email protected]. We check every report against the sources, fix what's wrong and note material corrections on the page. See our corrections policy.

Conflicts of interest

Featured partners and sponsors have no say in how firms are scored or in what we write, and they don't see lists before they're published. We don't take a fee for any case or referral. Anyone who writes or reviews for us has to tell us about any relationship with a firm they cover, and that person doesn't work on that firm's lists.

Methodology versions

When the method changes, we publish the new version here and move every list to it at its next refresh. Each list shows the version it was scored under.