Legal directories

Solicitors

The Law Society’s Find a Solicitor is provided by the Law Society of England and Wales. This is a free service for anyone looking for information about organisations or people providing legal services in England and Wales that are regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA). Find a Solicitor aims to include all SRA regulated law firms, individuals and the organisations that contain regulated individuals who choose to be listed. Additionally, it references non-solicitors who are members of the Law Society’s accreditation schemes. The “Quick search” is designed for members of the public wishing to find someone in their area who can help with a specific legal issue. The “Pro search” provides more advanced search functionality, to find a specific person or organisation by name, by SRA ID or by their primary and secondary areas of practice. Additional search filters enable searches by Law Society accreditation scheme name and selection of accessibility options, e.g. disabled access to building, hearing induction loop and legal aid.

The Law Society of Scotland provides a directory of all Scottish firms which can be searched by name of firm, town or category of work. There is also a separate section to search for individual accredited experts (solicitors) in specific fields of law.

The Law Society of Northern Ireland provides a register of all solicitors in Northern Ireland here. You can search by County or town, by specialism and by name.

The Law Society of Ireland provides a directory of Irish firms here. You can search for an individual solicitor, a firm, a firm of solicitors by geographical location or by category of work undertaken.

FindLaw UK, part of the Thomson Reuters Group, has now been relaunched as a major new legal information site. The Solicitor Directory has 10,000 solicitors in the database. The user can search by area of law and by location to find a list of solicitors (although you cannot use the directory to look up a particular solicitor, as you can in the Law Society Directory). Solicitors can pay a fee for an enhanced entry in the directory with a number of different tiers of pricing and visibility.

Lawyer Locator is the web version of the what used to be the Butterworths Law directory, now owned by LexisNexis a division of Reed Elsevier (UK) Ltd. LawyerLocator offers a free searchable database of over 11,000 solicitors and law firms allowing users to search, select and contact potential legal representation for their case. Searches can be made by name, specialisation, town, postcode, individual name and name of practice. Firms pay a fee to be in this directory with various levels of fee (and exposure) possible.

Waterlow Legal Search, published by Wilmington Publishing & Information Ltd, is an established source of contact information for businesses working within and supporting the legal profession in England and Wales. There are seven search products in the suite including solicitors, barristers and experts. Solicitors firms (13,000) can be searched can be searched by town, county, work category, number of partners and language. The search returns name additional details if the firm has paid a fee. There is also a list of firms who undertake Agency Commissions, International Law Firms, Legal/Investigative and Expert Witness Companies. (This directory is not for individual solicitors, for which the The Law Society’s Directory, described above, is the best source of information). There is a list of barristers chambers (400) split between London and the rest of England and Wales. (This directory is not for individual barristers, for which the The Bar Directory, part of the Legal Hub, described above, is the best source of information).

Hallmark Legal, part of Hallmark Publishing, was created in 1998 to provide software, reference material and other services to the legal and other professions and occupations. It is a free online legal directory and was formerly known as The Office Directory for Lawyers. It covers Solicitor, Barristers, Chambers, Courts and Tribunals, Advice Agencies, Police Stations, Prisons, CPS, Probation, Experts and Professional Organisations, Local Authorities/Councils, Government Departments, MPs and Ministers, European Union Offices, NHS, Universities, Law Training, Embassies, Property, Legal Businesses Advice Agencies, Charities, Private Investigators, Service and Supplies and Legal Recruitment with Hallmark Legal Jobs.

Chambers & Partners provide UK and global guides (185 jurisdictions) to the worlds leading lawyers – and these directories are online without charge. The firms can be selected by specialisation and region. They have over 150 full-time researchers investigating the reputations of leading lawyers throughout the world to produce the Global Directory. They also focus on the UK to produce the UK Directory, and the USA to produce the USA Guide to the legal profession.

Infolaw, the legal information site run by Nick Holmes, provides a free access listing of lawyers’ websites in the UK and Ireland which is fully searchable by firm name, work type and location. Entries in the directory are free and link directly to the firm’s or chamber’s website. Any firm or chambers can check their entry, and submit amendments to the url, locations and work types listed.

Firms of Solicitors in England, Wales, Scotland, Norther ireland and Ireland (on this site) lists approximately 7,000 firms – all the ones I know about. The lists are “browsable” by the name of the firm. This is a free directory – no charge is made to the firms to be in the list. I am happy to provide a free entry for any firm I have missed, if they contact me.

Barristers

In association with the Bar Council, Juriosity provides the new online Bar Directory and more. Juriosity makes available to the market a platform which combines data about barristers and chambers, their practice areas, their successes, their experience, track record and content which is designed to enhance the market’s understanding of their work. The platform has been built from the ground up with new features and benefits. All members of the Bar have a free profile in the directory. However, the platform is far more than just a directory and includes a self-publishing platform enabling barristers to demonstrate their expertise by adding case notes, articles, commentary or opinion pieces. Barristers and chambers are in full control of their Bar Directory profile and can update it at any time. Other legal professionals and clients can “follow” barristers chambers and posts will appear on the news feed of anyone “following” them.

Havers find-a-barrister search engine provides a searching process to more than 11,000 barristers by their expertise/town/junior or QC or simply by their name or set of Chambers. The search engine is free to use. Barristers can also be searched under a category of “Accepts Public Access work”. New technology allows easy linkage between the names of barristers who appear in cases, or have written publications, and their individual barrister or Chambers profiles and websites. Major publishers providing this information include Lawtel, Westlaw, ICLR, Emplaw, JustCite and Justis so there are links from Havers directory to case reports and other information on the publishers’ web sites. Barristers have to pay a subscription for this enhanced facility but their basic contact details are provided for free.
An article about the Havers Directory appeared in the Internet Newsletter for Lawyers online here.

Barristers Directory provided by Alexander Barristers Chambers, lays out a further set of links to various other useful directories of barristers.

The Faculty of Advocates is the organisation for Scottish barristers (but they are called Advocates in Scotland). This was established by an Act of the Scottish Parliament in 1532. There are 683 members of which approximately 417 are practising advocates including QC’s. There is a directory of practising members on the site.

Chambers in England & Wales (on this site) provides brief descriptions of key Chambers. I am happy to provide a free entry for any Chambers which contacts me.

International directories

International Correspondence Lawyers (ICL) offers an extensive list of legal and financial experts in more than 100 countries worldwide, also information on business setup and tax rates as well as links to national and international organizations within the law and finance sector, e.g. bar associations, courts, chambers of commerce etc. The directory is managed by Daten Info Service Eibl GmbH, a specialist enterprise with Headoffice in Cologne. The directory was started in 1992.

Martindale-Hubbell provides access to more than one million legal professionals in the United States, Canada and 160 other countries, serving as a fundamental legal resource and marketing tool.

Waterlow Legal International Directory provides an international directory of law firms, searchable by firm name or by country. The country field is populated with firms who not only practice law relating to that country (but may be based in the UK) and firms who have offices in those countries. Note that the overseas branch offices of the larger UK firms are included in this international directory.

IFLR1000 is a guide to the world’s leading financial law firms. Compiled by a team of dedicated specialist legal journalists based in New York, London and Hong Kong, the IFLR1000 focuses on the leading law firms for corporate finance worldwide. The guide covers more than 100 jurisdictions. The rankings are based on the recommendations of in-house counsel at the world’s most prominent financial institutions and companies, as well as the leading lawyers in each legal market.

Directories of commercial law firms

The International Law Office provides a register of 2,000 commercial law firms which can be searched by area and by specialisation.

The Legal 500 has now been published for over twenty years. The Legal 500 Series provides the most comprehensive worldwide coverage currently available on legal services providers, in over 100 countries. Used by commercial and private clients, corporate counsel, CEOs, CFOs and professional advisers – as well as by other referrers of work both nationally and internationally – the series is widely chosen for its definitive judgement of law firm capabilities.