The 2020 edition of U.S. News & World Report and Best Lawyers has ranked Mouledoux, Bland, Legrand & Brackett a Metropolitan Tier 2 Law Firm in New Orleans for Admiralty & Maritime Law.
To be eligible for a ranking, a firm must have a lawyer listed in The Best Lawyers in America©, which recognizes the top 4 percent of practicing attorneys in the United States. Alan Brackett has been included as in The Best Lawyers in America for Admiralty & Maritime Law for the previous five years.
BEST LAW FIRMS METHODOLOGY
The U.S. News – Best Lawyers “Best Law Firms” rankings are based on a rigorous evaluation process that includes the collection of client and lawyer evaluations, peer review from leading attorneys in their field, and review of additional information provided by law firms as part of the formal submission process.
To be eligible for a ranking in a particular practice area and metro region, a law firm must have at least one lawyer who is currently recognized in Best Lawyers in that particular practice area and metro.
For the 2020 “Best Law Firms” list, the methodology for the initiative remained the same as in the previous nine years.
Clients were asked to provide feedback on firm practice groups, addressing expertise, responsiveness, understanding of a business and its needs, cost-effectiveness, civility, and whether they would refer another client to the firm. Clients also had the option to write in the names of law firms they’ve worked with on other matters and within practice areas beyond those they were asked to comment on by the submitting firm. Some clients chose to write a comment about their experience with the law firm. These comments are for reference only and were not used as data points in the formal evaluation process.
Lawyers also cast votes and were asked to consider expertise, responsiveness, whether they would refer a matter to a firm and whether they consider a firm a worthy competitor.
In addition to lawyer and client feedback, law firms were asked to provide general demographic and background information on the law firm and attorneys, and other data that speaks to the strengths of a law firm’s practice areas.
All of the quantitative and qualitative data were combined into an overall “Best Law Firms” score for each firm.
This data was then compared to other firms within the same metropolitan area and at the national level. Because firms were often separated by small or insignificant differences in overall score, U.S. News – Best Lawyers uses a tiering system rather than ranking law firms sequentially. The first tier in each metropolitan area includes those firms that scored within a certain percentage of the highest-scoring firm(s); the second tier, those firms that scored within a certain percentage of the next highest scoring firm(s), and so on.