to vote only on lawyers in the same specialty and in the same legal community. In medium-size legal communities (such as Columbia, South Carolina, or San Jose, California), lawyers may be asked about lawyers in related specialties in the same community or in the same specialty across the entire state. In small legal communities (such as Corpus Christi, Texas, or Rapid City, South Dakota), lawyers may be asked about all of the lawyers in the same community across the full range of specialties.

Best Lawyers is published annually. Each year, lawyers in half the states (by population) are called and asked to vote by phone; lawyers in the other half are asked to vote by e-mail or fax. The next year, the process is reversed, so that every voter has an opportunity to vote “in person” every two years. Whether by telephone, e-mail, or fax, we ask voting lawyers the same question, “If you could not handle a case yourself, to whom would you refer it?” Lawyers are asked to give nominees 5-1 numerical grades – 5 for a lawyer the voter would certainly refer a case to, 4 for a lawyer the voter would probably refer a case to, and 3 for a lawyer the voter might hesitate to refer a case to. Lawyers are allowed to give pluses or minuses in order to make their votes more precise. As soon as the selections are finalized, the selected lawyers are checked against state bar association sanction lists to make sure that every lawyer is in good standing with the ethics committee of his or her state bar. Then letters of congratulation are sent to all the listed lawyers.”