METHODOLOGY

Deals Awards

Leading law firms are invited to submit details of the major deals that they have been involved in within the calendar year 2005. In addition, ALB researchers will send out nomination forms and conduct interviews with leading practitioners, in-house counsel and use their own stock of industry knowledge to evaluate the major deals of the year. Upon completion of research, a shortlist of the deal finalists will be compiled. A panel of in-house counsel will then examine the reports, collate the submissions and rate each deal according to size, complexity, breadth and innovation.

Firms of the Year Awards
Peer nominations are gathered from a wide range of practitioners in the relevant jurisdiction. From this initial research stage emerge shortlists, typically of four or five firms, for each category.

A summary of the nominations together with these firm submissions and more third-party material gathered by the ALB research team are then forwarded to the panel of judges. The panel, mainly composed of senior in-house lawyers, then vote for winners in each category. A compilation of these votes reveals the final winners.

Parameters
The parameters for the awards are:
i. the China market
ii. deals completed within calendar year 2005

The selection process has four elements. In chronological order these are:

  • criteria setting
  • research
  • shortlisting
  • judging

Criteria setting
The ALB editorial and management team define four criteria for judging the overall excellence of any given deal.
These are as follows:

  • size - the financial value of the deal and the quantity of legal work involved
  • complexity - the degree to which advanced legal and financial techniques and structures have been applied to the deal
  • breadth - the degree to which the deal spanned jurisdictions, practice areas, parties and industries
  • innovation - the degree to which the deal involved groundbreaking, original legal techniques and structures

The panel of judges, which includes senior in-house lawyers, are then asked to assess the importance of each criteria by assigning ...... From an aggregation of these numerical values the final weightings emerge. (The panel of judges is not revealed until the night of the Awards ceremony.) Law firms are informed of the weightings.

Research
Leading law firms in China are then contacted directly in November 2005 and asked to make submissions in each or any of the categories.
The submissions in the Deals Categories should detail deals on which the firm has worked within calendar year 2005 that it feels are deserving of the award in that category. Firms are asked to give information under the four criteria given above - size, complexity, breadth and innovation - as well as to detail all parties involved, date of completion and lead partner.

Each submission should have a summary no longer than 500 words in the sample format provided. The deadline for submissions is 1 December 2005.
In addition, relevant personnel at the major investment banks are invited to make nominations in appropriate categories.

Targeted telephone research is conducted by the ALB editorial and research team in late January / February. Finally, all relevant third-party material is consulted.

Please send submissions by email to stephen.mulrenan@keymedia.com.au

Shortlisting
The large amount of information collected during the research stage is then analysed and assessed by the ALB editorial and research team. While this task is certainly onerous, previous experience has shown that, because several firms are involved in any major deal, a consensus in the research material submitted by firms becomes apparent and a shortlist of deals in each category thus emerges. Information from the initial research stage - nominations invited from the readers of ALB magazine - is then cross-checked to ensure no deserving deals have been omitted.
Shortlisted deals and the firms that have worked on them will be published in Issue 3.2 of ALB.