The 2018 edition of U.S. News & World Report and Best Lawyers® has ranked Steeg Law Firm as a Metropolitan Tier 1 Law Firm in New Orleans for Real Estate Law, Litigation – Real Estate, and Commercial Transactions/UCC Law. Steeg Law was also ranked a Metropolitan Tier 2 Law Firm in New Orleans for Banking and Finance Law, Commercial Litigation and Litigation – Bankruptcy.
Steeg Law has been honored every year since 2010, the first year that Best Lawyers began including law firms in their rankings.
To be eligible for a ranking, a firm must have a lawyer listed in The Best Lawyers in America©, which recognizes the top 4 percent of practicing attorneys in the United States. Steeg Law has five attorneys included in Best Lawyers, including Robert M. Steeg, Charles L. Stern, Jr., Randy Opotowsky, Lillian E. Eyrich and David A. Martinez.
Mr. Steeg is one of a select group of lawyers who has been included for 20 years. In addition, three Steeg Law attorneys have previously been named Best Lawyers “Lawyer of the Year,” New Orleans, Louisiana, an honor that only a single lawyer in each practice area, in each community receives.
- Charles L. Stern, Jr. – Best Lawyers 2015 and 2018 New Orleans Litigation – Real Estate “Lawyer of the Year,” New Orleans, LA
- Randy Opotowsky – Best Lawyers 2014 New Orleans Litigation – Real Estate “Lawyer of the Year,” New Orleans, LA
- Lillian E. Eyrich – Best Lawyers 2012 “New Orleans Best Lawyers Real Estate Law Lawyer of the Year,” New Orleans, LA
About Best Law Firms
The U.S. News – Best Lawyers “Best Law Firms” rankings are based on a rigorous evaluation process that includes the collection of client and lawyer evaluations, peer review from leading attorneys in their field, and review of additional information provided by law firms as part of the formal submission process. To be eligible for a ranking in a particular practice area and metro region, a law firm must have at least one lawyer who is currently recognized in Best Lawyers in that particular practice area and metro.
For the 2018 “Best Law Firms” list, the methodology for the initiative remained the same as in the previous six years.
Clients were asked to provide feedback on firm practice groups, addressing expertise, responsiveness, understanding of a business and its needs, cost-effectiveness, civility, and whether they would refer another client to the firm. Clients also had the option to write in the names of law firms they’ve worked with on other matters and within practice areas beyond those they were asked to comment on by the submitting firm. Some clients chose to write a comment about their experience with the law firm. These comments are for reference only and were not used as data points in the formal evaluation process.
Lawyers also voted on expertise, responsiveness, integrity, cost-effectiveness, whether they would refer a matter to a firm, and whether they consider a firm a worthy competitor. They were also asked to vote on law firms that have a preeminent national presence within specified legal practice area(s) they know well. For the fourth year, a Law Firm Leaders Survey was implemented to provide personal insight on the legal landscape surrounding the nationally ranked practice areas. In addition to information from these surveys, the rankings incorporate the 7.3 million evaluations of 54,463 individual leading lawyers collected by Best Lawyers in its most recent annual survey.
In addition to lawyer and client feedback, law firms were asked to provide us with general demographic and background information on the law firm and attorneys, and other data that speaks to the strengths of a law firm’s practice areas.
All of the quantitative and qualitative data were combined into an overall “Best Law Firms” score for each firm. This data was then compared to other firms within the same metropolitan area and at the national level. Because firms were often separated by small or insignificant differences in overall score, we use a tiering system rather than ranking law firms sequentially. The first tier in each metropolitan area includes those firms that scored within a certain percentage of the highest-scoring firm(s); the second tier, those firms that scored within a certain percentage of the next highest scoring firm(s), and so on. The national rankings were based on metropolitan rankings as well as on the number of offices each firm had with a metropolitan ranking and on the level of legal activity in each metropolitan area. The number of tiers included in each practice area or metropolitan area ranking varies, and some specialties may not be ranked in metro areas in which there is not enough data to provide rankings in a particular specialty. Of the 13,745 firms that were eligible to submit information for the ranking process, 13,372 firms, including a large number of one-person firms, received rankings, and 8,914 of those firms received first-tier national and/or metropolitan rankings.