Law360's annual awards recognize specific achievements and groundbreaking legal work of lawyers, law firms, or practice groups during the past year or during the lawyer's career.

Law360 awards including Titans of the Plaintiffs Bar, Regional Powerhouses, MVPs of the Year, and Practice Groups of the Year recognize lawyers, law firms and practice groups for outstanding successes and groundbreaking achievements in specific legal matters over the previous 12 months.

Law360's Rising Star award recognizes specific achievements in legal matters over the course of the early years of a lawyer's career.

Judging Methodology

Submissions are judged by a group of 50-60 Law360 managing editors, assistant managing editors, and editors-at-large. Each category is judged by at least three people who have significant expertise in the particular practice area, category, industry or geographic region.

All judges have deep knowledge and understanding of the legal industry and significant expertise on the matters they are reviewing. We lay the groundwork to allow our judges to make decisions impartially and apply the same high standards we use in our day-to-day work as legal journalists.

Judges also read each entry as a blank slate, without bringing any prior knowledge of the firm and its strengths into their evaluation. We are judging what is in the submission and nothing more.

Judges evaluate each submission based on the following criteria:

• The significance of the litigation wins, deals or legal matters.
• The size and complexity of the litigation wins, deals or legal matters.
• The importance and larger context of the litigation wins, deals or legal matters.

Judges give preference to developments that are more final in nature — matters that would be considered significant achievements or victories. They are looking for particularly challenging circumstances that were successfully overcome and achievements that have an impact on a particular industry or area of the law. Achievements that have an impact outside the four corners of a case generally hold the most sway.

Judges are looking for demonstrated wins and completed achievements. A submission full of ongoing matters is unlikely to win. Most of our awards have a one-year timeframe for eligible matters, and we want to see attorneys scoring definitive wins and notable achievements during that period. Getting hired on a new case or waiting for a verdict in a trial do not make for a good submission.

Judging Process

Law360 typically looks to choose three to five winners per practice area or state for most awards, and about 10 plaintiffs attorneys each year for the Titans of the Plaintiffs Bar.

We sometimes choose more for some categories if the entries are particularly strong. We also reserve the right not to declare any winners in a category if we don't receive enough entries or the entries don't meet the editors' standards.

Once winners have been selected, Law360 notifies the firm or company of whether each of its entrants was selected or not. These email notifications are automatically generated and are sent to the person who entered the submission on our online platform.

Law360 publishes a profile on every person or group who wins an award. Once firms have been notified of who won, reporters will schedule interviews with their assigned winners to speak about the matters in the submission and more generally about the winners' practice.

Terms and Conditions for Nominees

The Law360 awards program strives to be transparent about why our winners are chosen. To that end, we require our nominees to sign the following terms and conditions in order to ensure we can write a robust profile on our winners that explains exactly why they were chosen.

1. I understand that if my nominee is selected as an award winner and is then unwilling or unable to complete an on-the-record interview about the matters submitted within the reporter's allotted time frame, Law360 reserves the right to rescind the award.


2. I understand that this nomination is on the record, and anything contained within it may be used in a profile if my nominee is selected. In the event the nominator, nominee or the nominee's law firm attempts to redact any of the submitted information after the nominee has been selected, Law360 reserves the right to rescind the award.