With the benefit of over 15 years of research and thousands of votes from clients and private practitioners, Who’s Who Legal takes a closer look at the developing trends in the corporate immigration legal marketplace worldwide. Last year we reported that the nature of corporate immigration work is increasingly difficult to predict and administer, and the relationship between lawyers and agencies continues to be strained by bureaucracy and anti-immigration agendas. This year, governments are making attempts to remedy these challenges in the market.

With the benefit of over 17 years of independent research, encompassing thousands of votes from international clients and private practitioners, and hundreds of hours of interviews, Who’s Who Legal examines the recent trends and developments in the global construction law marketplace.

In this section we analyse the findings of our research in greater depth to identify the firms and practitioners who stand out worldwide. Clyde & Co is the leading firm in our research with an impressive 17 listings across seven offices. It has been a triumphant year for the firm, which has gone from strength to strength after its 2011 merger with Barlow Lyde & Gilbert. International “heavyweight” Hogan Lovells narrowly misses out on the top spot with 16 “outstanding” lawyers listed. The firm has a particularly solid base in Europe, with 11 lawyers featured from seven countries. DLA Piper demonstrates its huge international footprint with 11 lawyers featured from eight offices spanning five continents. Norton Rose also has a strong presence in our publication with nine lawyers listed. It is best represented by its practice in South Africa where we feature three leading practitioners.

With the benefit of over 14 years of research and tens of thousands of votes from clients and private practitioners, Who’s Who Legal takes a closer look at developing trends in the insurance and resinsurance legal marketplace.

For the first time in this edition we have focused our research on four distinct categories of life science-related work, with the aim of identifying the leading practitioners for each discipline. Through interviews with clients, lawyers and industry contacts we have picked out the foremost lawyers for related intellectual property disputes and counselling, regulatory matters, product liability defence work and transactional deals in the sector. Bird & Bird leads our research with 31 individuals selected overall, followed by Hogan Lovells which fields 26 lawyers from nine different countries. Both Covington & Burling LLP and Sidley Austin LLP have 20 practitioners recognised, demonstrating the strength of their life sciences practice groups.

With the benefit of over 15 years of research and thousands of nominations from clients and private practitioners worldwide, Who’s Who Legal takes a closer look at developing trends in the legal market worldwide. In this edition we divide our research into four distinct sections. No single practitioner earns recognition in all of the IP, product liability, transactional and regulatory sections, a fact which demonstrates the diverse nature of the work in this sector.