Top 3 Legal is an online platform that is redefining how businesses manage their relationships with external lawyers enabling them to instruct the right lawyer for each matter.
In June 2020 Top 3 Legal was acquired by Chambers and Partners, the world’s leading provider of legal research and analysis. Chambers empowers organisations to make informed decisions when selecting legal services, saving time and resources and reducing risk. The independent rankings Chambers provides are central to its proposition and is why Chambers research is often referred to as the gold standard. Top 3 Legal is an excellent fit for Chambers, accelerating the digitisation of its directories and providing a powerful engine focused on corporate teams.
To learn more about Chambers and Partners, visit chambers.com
We are pleased to now be partnering with Thomson Reuters Legal Tracker, the corporate legal industry’s most widely used software for managing e-billing, matter management, and performance analytics, giving 1,450 corporate legal departments access to Top 3 Legal’s recommended lawyer database and including the ability to use Team Sheets to share knowledge and recommendations in the corporate’s in-house team.
Top 3 Legal is an online platform that is redefining how businesses manage their relationships with external lawyers and law firms. It enables businesses to instruct the right lawyer for each matter, informed by their knowledge and experience of those external lawyers. This includes access to contractors, freelancers and alternative legal services providers.
Informing businesses through knowledge and trust, Top 3 Legal enables them to manage their own private network of external lawyers and law firms via a simple, clever and collaborative interface.
Top 3 Legal uses the power of peer-to-peer recommendations to create a constantly updating, trusted network of endorsed lawyers. It offers live and immediate access to their lawyers’ contact details and profiles as well as to relationship law firms’ own suggested contacts by work type and location.
A crucial feature is that it allows users to see what others in their organisation have to say about their experience when dealing with a particular lawyer.
It provides a smart way to use, share and pool recommendations and notes.
Research shows that businesses use lawyers recommended by people they trust. Knowing who the best lawyers are, at both partner and associate level, is what matters.
Large users of lawyers and law firms can find it difficult to share this information effectively across a big team and different locations.
Smaller companies (who often only have a very small in-house legal team) may have limited or no trusted referrals to rely on and so benefit from being able to access recommendations from people in other organisations they know and trust.
Law firms wanting to promote themselves and raise their lawyers’ profiles have faced time-consuming and costly annual processes to be listed in traditional directories that, ultimately, do not offer trusted endorsements to clients and prospective clients.
Individual lawyers need a bespoke platform that allows them to show their expertise and credentials, secure recommendations and develop client relationships.
Top 3 Legal offers a completely different approach that is deeply rooted in trust. It is a highly efficient and effective platform that offers live information which enables businesses to very quickly and simply see which lawyer is right for what they are looking for.
As well as recommendations from colleagues and their wider network, it also shares what others in their organisation have to say about their experience when dealing with a particular lawyer.
Top 3 Legal was conceived by three lawyers. Two were senior partners of leading international law firms and one was General Counsel at a FTSE 100 company.
Gareth Stephenson is a former corporate partner at Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, Richard Fleetwood is a former corporate partner at Addleshaw Goddard and Richard Shoylekov was GC at Ferguson plc.
With almost a century of knowledge and experience between them, they faced the challenges of founding, building and developing relationships between lawyers and clients first hand, both nationally and internationally.
As a result, businesses and law firms can trust that the functionality provided by Top 3 Legal is both efficient and also relevant to their needs.
Gareth Stephenson was a corporate partner at Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer for 20 years advising a multitude of international clients on complex multi-jurisdictional deals. He was the lead relationship partner for many global clients, including banks and corporates, with responsibility for the worldwide client relationships.
Richard Shoylekov has over 20 years’ experience of leading international in-house legal teams. He has also been responsible for developing governance, risk and compliance programmes. He was General Counsel of FTSE100 companies Corus Group plc and, most recently, Ferguson plc, where he was GC for 10 years.
Richard Fleetwood was a corporate partner at Addleshaw Goddard for 20 years, advising a range of both private and public sector organisations and leading key client relationships. He was also a Board member and heavily involved in the development of technology across the firm to improve client service delivery.
Relationship firms input relevant lawyer profiles and work type expertise
Client teams add their lawyer recommendations and private notes
Client’s private Team Sheet
One-click access
Trusted lawyer profiles by firm/ work type/ location and colleagues’ recommendations, and notes
Top 3 Legal is an ever-evolving platform that is continually adding new features to improve how we support businesses, and their law firms. Here are just a few of the already established ones.
Team Sheets are an easy to use tool that give immediate access to the details of external lawyers used by a business. They are built from invited law firms providing their lawyer contacts by work type and location to which businesses then add their own contacts, recommendations, notes and favourites.
When a business is searching for a lawyer with a specific expertise in a particular location, their Team Sheet allows them to quickly see a list of matching lawyers from their relationship law firms. The Team Sheet shows contact information, profiles and, importantly, recommendations and private notes from colleagues on their own experience of working with those lawyers.
Two types of lawyer profiles are available.
A free profile shows a lawyer’s basic profile information and enables individual lawyers to request and receive client recommendations.
As well as doing all this, premium profiles allow lawyers to provide much richer information to users. This includes bio, more work types and recent matter and sector experience. They can also add links to thought leadership and opinion pieces to help support their credentials.
Using the power of peer-to-peer endorsements, Top 3 Legal provides a constantly updating, trusted network of recommended lawyers with immediate access to lawyer contact details and profiles.
Users can see who has recommended the lawyer from within their own organisation, who has recommended them from their extended network and can also see the lawyer’s total number of recommendations.
Lawyers who have been recommended by people in a client organisation are more likely to benefit from repeat instructions and new work from others in that organisation. Business users can share these trusted recommendations with people they network with in other organisations, so increasing the chance of additional work for the lawyer.
Businesses can also add notes on the lawyers to create a corporate record of which lawyer helped on which matter and to record their views on those lawyers. These notes are private and are visible only to members of the client’s team.
Registered users can access a directory of innovative products and services provided by law firms and other providers, including technology and resource solutions. These products and services help businesses to work smarter and more efficiently.
Research shows that businesses use lawyers recommended by people they trust.
Large users of lawyers and law firms can find it difficult to gather and share this information effectively across a big team and different locations. This is especially true when a range of lawyers are used across a number of relationship law firms and other providers of legal services.
Smaller companies (who often only have a very small in-house legal team) may have limited or no trusted recommendations to rely on and so benefit from being able to access recommendations from people in other organisations they know and trust.
Top 3 Legal resolves all these issues efficiently by providing live information which enables businesses to very quickly and simply see which lawyer is right for what they are looking for, informed by their organisation’s and network’s knowledge and experience of those external lawyers.
Team Sheets are already being used by major companies in Europe, North America, Asia and Australia and their relationship firms.
There currently is no charge for having a Team Sheet.
If you’d like to set up a Team Sheet, please email [email protected] and we’ll get you up and running.
Top 3 Legal enables law firms to ensure that every time anybody in their client’s organisation, anywhere in the world, is looking for a particular lawyer for a specific task, the profile of their most appropriate lawyer is immediately visible to the client team member on the client’s Team Sheet with all the relevant information.
Team Sheets provide a simple and effective way for relationship partners to build and strengthen client relationships by integrating their lawyer team information into the client’s own systems and ways of working.
Standard lawyer profiles are completely free.
Premium profiles are subject to an annual subscription per user. These range from £120 per profile per annum for up to 50 profiles but with material discounts for more than 50 profiles and/or where the firm is invited to add lawyers to a client’s Team Sheet. We also offer preferential rates for firms taking Team Sheets to their clients.
For further information about taking out premium profiles, or if you require further information or a demo, please email [email protected].
Every lawyer in the world can register and create a free profile which they own and control, helping them build their market profile and develop their own personal brand.
With a premium profile they can provide richer information to clients and users, including their bio, more work types and recent matter and sector experience. They can also add links to thought leadership and opinion pieces to help support their credentials.
Top 3 Legal provides lawyers with the platform to put them directly in front of clients, increasing their chances of winning new instructions.
Individual lawyers who work as contractors or freelancers are also able to register so that their credentials are accessible to client users.
Standard profiles are completely free. Premium profiles cost £120 per lawyer per annum.
For further information about taking out a premium profile, or if you require further information, please email [email protected].
