Q: How do I get access to Lamp House Analytics?

A: Law firms need to subscribe to either our Basic or Advanced subscription to gain access to Lamp House Analytics. More detail about our subscriber packages is included below, or you can contact [email protected]

A: General Counsel and other legal buyers will be provided with access to the platform free of charge upon registration and verification of their position and credentials.

Q: What will we get access to with our Basic subscription?

A: As part of the Basic subscription, law firms will be able to:

• Review and update your firm’s profile, to showcase initiatives which may not be covered as part of the firm’s website or responsible business reporting. This updated profile will be viewable by the in-house community
• Benchmark your firm at a high level against the market as a whole, showing where you sit relative to the market average and market leading results.

Q: What else will we get access to with an Advanced subscription?

A: An Advanced subscription includes the same benefits as the Basic subscription, plus:

• Benchmark your firm again specific peer firms
• Explore responsible business activity of peer firms at a detailed level
• Identify gaps in external communication of responsible business strategy
• Access our wider repository of best practice case studies, state of the market report and General Counsel research

Subscribers also receive an Executive Summary report and bespoke analysis on their market position. We are also keen for our law firm subscribers to help shape the future of the data we collect as we evolve our research year-on-year.

Q: How long will we have access for?

A: Subscription packages are for a 12-month access from the point you sign up to the product.

Q: What happens to my data when my subscription ends?

A: We’re confident you will find sufficient value in the data to continue your involvement, but if you decide to end your firm’s subscription your access to the dashboards will end. You will no longer be able to update your firm’s profile with new activity. If you are happy for your firm’s most recent submission to remain on Lamp House Analytics, we will maintain this as is; if not, we will revert back to our baseline data which is based on our evaluation of your firm’s website.

Q: What is the process for revising our firm’s profile?

A:Once you have chosen a subscription package and completed contracting with us, we will securely share a submission form with you. This form includes our baseline research about your firm, taken from our evaluation of your website.

We will ask you to review this information and check that it is up-to-date and reflective of your firm’s current responsible business activity. You can also update the submission form to let us know about other initiatives that are not currently communicated on your website or were not in place at the time we conducted our research.

Once completed, you will securely share back your submission form with us for review. We may ask for you to clarify areas where you have made updates and/or request evidence if your results are in contrast to what we have found through our website evaluation.  

When both parties are satisfied with the submission, your updated submission will appear on your firm’s Lamp House Analytics profile. It will supersede the existing firm profile on the site which was based solely on our evaluation of your website.

At this point, you will receive access to Lamp House Analytics as per your subscription agreement.

Q: Our firm has a number of separate entities and we report our responsible business results differently, how do you handle this?

A: Our baseline data takes a firm-wide approach as much as is possible.

When a law firm becomes a subscriber to Lamp House Analytics, they may choose to keep a single, firm-wide profile. Alternatively, firms can create multiple profiles to represent different parts of the firm. For example, a firm may choose to have a profile which details its activity in the UK and a separate profile for the US side of the firm. These profiles will be displayed separately on Lamp House Analytics, and clearly marked so users can understand which part of the firm the data refers to.

Q: A lot of our responsible business initiatives are only in place in part of our firm, do we get credit for this?

A: In principle, we award higher scores for initiatives that are in place across all or most of the firm. However, we recognise this can be difficult to achieve (especially for international firms) and we factor this into our scoring approach for specific metrics. For example, firms are not penalised in our scoring for not being able to report on certain diversity metrics at a firm-wide level.

Q: My firm isn’t featured yet – can anyone join?

A: We intend to grow the number of firms we profile and we are keen to bring new firms on board. Please get in touch with [email protected] to get involved.

Q: Who will see the data you hold about our firm?

A: All of the data we capture through our desk research is publicly accessible through a firm's website. We do not capture any PII about individuals within our research.

In-house legal teams with access to Lamp House Analytics will be able to see our analysis of specific firms on a named-basis.

Law firms who subscribe to our packages will get varying levels of access to other firms’ profile data dependent on their subscription level. Law firms with a Basic subscription will not be able to see data about specific firms. Law firms an Advanced subscription have full access to the our data and can see our analysis of specific firms on a named-basis.

Q: How will you protect our data?

A: We do not report on any firm activities which are either not publicly available to anyone, or which a firm has not already agreed for us to include and share as part of the firm's submission. Furthermore, we do not report on any data about individuals, or collect any PII as part of our research. We recognise that some of this data may be deemed commercially or reputationally sensitive; however, one of our goals is to increase transparency and visibility of what the market as whole is doing. Ultimately, if your firm does not wish to share certain information over and above what is publicly available, that is your choice.

We facilitate secure submissions for firms using private SharePoint sites and the data is held and hosted in a secure cloud environment.

Q: How frequently will we need to / be able to update our data?

A: We envisage that firms’ profiles will need a full review annually at each re-subscription point. This is important to ensure your firm's profile remains up to date and reflects the progress you are making on your responsible business journey.

We also plan to evolve the metrics we track over time, as what is means to be a responsible business also evolves. As such, we may ask for you to provide updates on any new areas we introduce to our analysis. We will keep these updates to a maximum of once per quarter. These quarterly updates will also be an opportunity for you to make revisions to your overall profile if things have changed.

Q: We know our website does not cover the full range of initiatives we adopt, does that give a poor impression in your results?

A: Our website evaluation is reflective of what any external stakeholder would see. We recognise that websites and reports do not always show the full picture, and may not be fully up to date. By subscribing to Lamp House Analytics, firms have the opportunity to review and update the information about their firm. Firms with an Advanced subscription will also receive an Executive Summary which includes a ‘gap analysis’; this allows firms to understand how their external communications compares to the market, and where there are gaps between what the firm is doing in reality and what it is communicating.

Q: How do you score us?

A: We apply a scoring framework to every law firm profile. Our scoring framework considers three broad areas: Planet, People and Governance.

In each of these areas, we assess firms on five criteria: measures and targets in place; transparency; practical action implemented within their firm; industry collaboration and wider recognition.

As well as assessing activity across these broad categories, our scoring considers factors like:

• The relative impact of particular initiatives and the required commitment / effort to implement them
• The breadth of a firm's activities, and whether these are firm-wide or in one or two offices
• The balance in the range of activities adopted to support each focus area

Q: What is a ‘good’ score in your framework?

A: Lamp House Analytics helps firms to understand their position relative to the rest of the market – whether you are one of the leaders or where you sit relative to leaders. Lamp House Analytics uses percentile ranges to showcase this information and we do not currently apply bandings to good or poor scoring ranges.

Our scoring framework also leaves significant headroom for growth and firms should not expect to receive full marks. We recognise as well that each firm will have its own specific areas of strategic focus, and it may receive higher or lower scores within the Planet, People or Governance categories depending on where it is placing most emphasis as a firm.

Our aim is to show how firms are progressing against their own activity and relative to the market, and to show how the bar is being raised over time.

Q: Will you be publishing rankings?

A: In our first Lamp House Annual Report we name the leaders in each category (Planet, People, Governance) from our baseline research. We also showcase the firms in the top quartile overall, though this is done in alphabetical order and does not reveal the scores received by each of these firms and their position relative to the leader.

Lamp House Analytics will show which percentile firms sit in relative to the market against our scoring framework, and the tool can be used to make comparisons between firms.

In the first year of this product, our focus is on providing firms the opportunity to update their profiles with behind the scenes information. Over time, we plan to publish a more comprehensive analysis of relative firm performance. Firms who subscribe to our Advanced package can also receive a detailed offline report including analysis of where they sit relative to competitors.