Legal 500 takes website offline after critical barrister reviews appear

The Legal 500 has taken its website offline after a series of unusually blunt and in some cases highly critical reviews of barristers appeared in its latest rankings.

The directory published its new rankings yesterday, but its website has been unavailable since this morning and remained down at the time of publication.

Non-Billable has seen several screenshots of listings before they disappeared. Some contained detailed criticism of individual barristers, while others featured unusually short descriptions that appeared out of keeping with the directory’s usual style.

One barrister was described simply as “It was solid and a pleasure to deal with”, another as “The legal brain is outstanding”, and another as “Strength from top to bottom”.

Other comments were markedly more negative. One barrister was described as “Adequate but disorganised and indecisive”.

RollOnFriday, which first reported the story, also published redacted screenshots of several listings. One said a barrister’s written work was good but “can sometimes be sloppy”, while raising concerns over delays.

Another said a barrister had become “less responsive and not consistently available”, while another was described as having a temperament that “can be difficult to deal with sometimes”.

In a statement shared with Non-Billable, The Legal 500 said an error during a website update resulted in “a small amount of testimonial information being published incorrectly”.

“As soon as we became aware of the issue, we removed the content from our website and began additional verification checks,” the company said.

It apologised to customers and said it was taking steps to strengthen its “quality assurance processes and safeguards to prevent a recurrence”.

Staff dispute

Along with Chambers, The Legal 500 is one of the legal market’s most popular directories, ranking law firms and individual lawyers using research that includes client feedback.

A group of Legal 500 workers recently went on strike for more than two weeks over pay and working conditions. The dispute was resolved this week after trade union Unite said parent company Legalease had agreed a £2,000 pay rise.

The Times reported this week that insiders had raised concerns about workloads and the quality of research at the business.

One source told the newspaper that “to all intents and purposes there is no longer any quality control at this company”, while another claimed researchers had been told to make only minimal edits to client testimonials.

Legal 500 chief executive Tim Wakefield told The Times the company "firmly" rejected claims made about editorial standards and quality.

Update: This article has been updated to include comment from The Legal 500.