The annual Prospera survey, which measures clients’ satisfaction with Baltic law firms, has revealed there is a tight race between the top-tier providers in the Baltics and a high overall level of client satisfaction.
Sorainen received the highest regional ranking among the competitors for “Best legal competence – all legal areas”. Clients ranked us the Baltic law firm with the highest competence in the following eight legal and tax areas, out of a total of 14 surveyed:
- M&A
- Banking and finance
- Competition and EU
- Employment
- Tax
- Real estate
- Private equity
- Corporate advisory
Sorainen was placed joint third in the overall rankings, with differences between strong market players being insignificant, as usual. Sorainen stood out from the competition in the “Quality across Baltic region” and “Diverse teams” categories.
Baltic clients are happier
Interestingly, the total satisfaction marks given to the top Baltic law firms were higher than the equivalent marks given by Scandinavian clients to the top-ranking Finnish and Swedish law firms. For example, in Sweden, the total satisfaction score of the firm placed top of the leaderboard was far below those of the Baltic top four this year.
“Baltic law firms have very satisfied clients and a tight race at the top,” commented researcher Martin Salomon of Kantar Sifo Prospera, the organisation that conducts the research. He added that one explanation for why Baltic clients tend to be more satisfied is that in Scandinavia, legal services are more often purchased by in-house lawyers, who are generally more demanding than a CEO or a CFO.
For example, in Sweden approximately 60% of the respondents are in-house lawyers, compared to about 30% in the Baltics. Since in-house lawyers’ voices are becoming more prominent in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania as well (just a year ago, only about a fifth of respondents were in-house lawyers), it will be interesting to see if it will affect Baltic satisfaction scores, Salomon noted.
Sorainen will focus on improving
“Client satisfaction is top of our strategic priorities. Although we are glad about receiving the top ranking for legal competences and some other criteria, we are frankly not satisfied with our overall score this year,” said Laimonas Skibarka, managing partner of Sorainen. “We will consider the feedback from this year’s survey and commit to increasing our focus on client satisfaction in order to return next year to the top position, where we were in 2020.”
The Prospera Tier 1 Law Firm Review covers 301 Baltic-based organisations that spend at least EUR 15,000 annually on outside legal help (EUR 10,000 in Latvia). About 60% of respondents are top executives and a third are company lawyers. Sorainen was taking part for the seventh time. In the survey, clients evaluate the performance of law firms in a number of categories, such as legal competence in various fields, and also for a number of performance indicators, such as lawyer’s skills, project staffing, and availability and service.
