How does Vault come up with its list of the Top 100 firms in the country? The first step is to compile a list of the most renowned law firms by reviewing the feedback we receive from previous surveys, consulting our previous lists, poring over legal publications, talking to lawyers in the field, and checking out other published rankings. We then asked these top firms to distribute a password-protected online survey to their associates. This year, more than 20,000 associates from all over the country returned anonymous surveys to Vault. We heard from lawyers in Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, Orlando, Palo Alto, Philadelphia, Phoenix, San Francisco, and Seattle—among many other locations. The online survey asked attorneys to score each of the law firms on a scale of 1 to 10 based on how prestigious it is to work for the firm. Associates were asked to ignore any firm with which they were unfamiliar and were not allowed to rate their own firms.

We collected all the surveys and averaged the score for each firm. The firms were then ranked in order, starting with the highest average prestige score as No. 1 on down to determine the Vault Law 100. Remember that in the Top 100, Vault is not assessing firms by profit, size, lifestyle, number of deals, or quality of service; we are ranking the most prestigious law firms based on the perceptions of practicing lawyers at peer firms.

Vault's 2021 Rankings are derived from Vault's Annual Associate Survey conducted between late January 2020 through early April 2020.