International Firm: Linklaters

Not exactly the firm everyone loves to love – a sentiment that sometimes appears to extend to the firm's own partnership – but Linklaters' results speak for themselves. There were other challengers for the title; including Latham & Watkins which continued its steady and surely unstoppable elevation towards the ranks of the emerging band of truly global law firms.

The newly-formed DLA Piper Rudnick Gray Cary also struck a more confident stance in its first year than rivals expected – although there is still much for it to prove. A classy New York duo, Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton and Simpson Thacher & Bartlett, also both distinguished themselves with robust performances at home and notable strides made in Europe. Baker & McKenzie, meanwhile, continued to put the 'McFirm' tag McFirmly behind it, with a confident financial performance. The firm also made a series of interesting hires, including bagging 25 partners from Coudert Brothers' New York HQ and a credible four-partner structured finance team in London. The firm's City office is clearly doing something very right, if Legal Week Intelligence's 2005 Client Satisfaction Report is anything to go by, with the firm achieving top-notch feedback from clients for value, quality and service.

Yet Linklaters remains the outstanding practice over the year. No international rival can match the firm in terms of breadth. In corporate, finance and property and across Europe and Asia there are precious few holes in the firm's practice. The past 12 months have also seen the firm seal its reputation as the only UK practice currently making a credible attempt to attack the US market.

This has not been achieved by accident. While many of its peers have dithered or become bogged down in strategic dissent, Linklaters has charted a clear course and then set out to achieve its goals.

Sometimes this has meant taking unpopular decisions – the firm was one of the first European firms to restructure its partnership to cope with the prolonged commercial slowdown – but the sense of clarity and progression is a telling contrast to most of its peer group.

The firm can also draw on some effective leaders – among them Tony Angel, Giles White and Nick Eastwell.

Ironically, if the firm has a weakness it comes from the client feedback. While no one doubts the quality, off-hand service or gaps in the ranks at the senior associates level sometimes let the firm down.

Such niggles can, in the short-term, be dismissed as growing pains. Linklaters deserves its moment of glory. The shortlist: Baker & McKenzie (highly commended); DLA Piper Rudnick Gray Cary; Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton; Gide Loyrette Nouel; Latham & Watkins; Simpson Thacher & Bartlett.

UK Firm: SJ Berwin

After 12 months in which a group of upper mid-market firms excelled, UK Firm of the Year was always going to be a fiercely competitive category.

Clyde & Co, which has been an exceptional performer in financial terms during the past three years, rounded off another year of quietly assured growth. In June, the firm also secured a well-received takeover of aviation boutique Beaumont & Son.

Shoosmiths' attempts to transform a disparate group of regional practices into a muscular national platform made the firm stand out against its peers.

Olswang, meanwhile, continued its post-tech crash rebound. When the firm began its diversification strategy in 2003 with the recruitment of DJ Freeman's property team, many were unconvinced, but Olswang has proved the doubters wrong. Aside from continuing to improve its quality of transactional work, illustrated by its current role on New Star Asset Management's IPO, the firm has achieved an enviable level of financial performance.

Even more impressive was the continued ascent of Berwin Leighton Paisner (BLP), a firm that for many has come to symbolise the rise of a select band of London's mid-market firms. With partner profits this year hitting £570,000, BLP has three years of outstanding financial performance behind it. But the crown goes to SJ Berwin, which has managed an impressive comeback over the past two years. This transformation has come partly from a conscious effort to modernise the dynamic firm, which was founded in 1982, with SJ Berwin taking steps to improve its governance and management.

Securing financial integration with its German arm, SJ Berwin Knopf Tulloch Steininger, also crowns five years of international expansion that the firm has pulled off far more successfully than many larger rivals. Aside from strategic successes, the firm appeared on a series of high quality deals, including advising on Prestbury's £400m acquisition of hotel chain Travelodge. Certainly in funds and real estate, the client feedback is superb, not only in the awards research, but also Legal WeekIntelligence's client satisfaction survey, which polled more than 200 FTSE companies.

The shortlist: Berwin Leighton Paisner (highly commended); Clyde & Co; Dickinson Dees; Olswang; Shoosmiths; Travers Smith.

Specialist Firm: Withers

The shortlist for specialist firm of the year could be divided into two categories. There were two niche firms that have stayed small and focused in the classic fashion, and there were three firms that have set out their stall on the international stage.

Of the niche players, Sacker & Partners has won praise from several corporate counsel for its pensions expertise, while Dickson Minto also won a place on the shortlist for mid-market corporate team of the year off the back of a particularly strong year.

The trio of international players all have one thing in common – an ambition to target a closely-defined client base well beyond the borders of their home country.

In fact, Bird & Bird sees itself as more than just a TMT firm. Nevertheless, that is indisputably how large chunks of the market view it. In and around the Patent Court, for example, Bird & Bird is regarded by many at the IP bar as the clear market leader.

Meanwhile, it has been continuing its dogged expansion abroad by opening in Madrid, Frankfurt and Rome and reinforcing other parts of its network, notably in Stockholm where it hired two highly-rated IT specialists from Linklaters. Ogier, too, has firmly committed itself to building an international practice. It has built on its 2004 merger with the 21-lawyer Cayman Islands practice Boxalls by opening in New Zealand and moving to build its London arm with an eye-catching partner raid on Maples and Calder.

But the winner of this category is Withers, a firm that has adopted the highly distinctive strategy of building a transatlantic private client practice.

There were certainly risks attached to the firm's 2002 merger with New York practice Bergman Horowitz & Reynolds in the shape of lost referrals. Yet this year's financials – double-digit increases in revenue and profits per partner – combined with the opening of an office in Geneva and the promise of expansion in the US suggest that its strategy is paying off.

As one New York-based private banker observes: "When they did the merger, I thought there was a gap in the market for a transatlantic private client firm and I have been impressed with their progress." The shortlist: Bird & Bird; Dickson Minto; Ogier; Sacker & Partners.

Corporate Team: Skadden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom

With cross-border European M&A moving back into gear, London's leading firms are finding their stride again, but it was a standout performance this year from two Wall Street firms that impressed on the international stage.

Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton, having been written off by some years ago for being too cautious with its international expansion, proved doubters wrong with a series of heavyweight continental instructions. With a practice that can call on teams in Germany, Belgium, Italy and France, Cleary will only have to take its London team up a notch to reach a significant breakthrough in Europe's deal market.

Yet for many, Skadden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom has already reached that point after a year in which the firm scooped significant new business and roles on some of Europe's biggest M&A transactions.

Private equity proved to be the most lucrative practice area again and with a busy buy-out house like Doughty Hanson as a major client, Skadden's London office was hardly likely to have a quiet year. The firm advised Doughty on five major transactions, including the £850m sale of the Priory Group and the £1bn flotation of RHM. It also increased its market share of deals for the client by starting to act on its German work, through the hire of Lovells corporate partner and Doughty contact, Julie Bradshaw. Skadden also bagged Swedish

insurance giant Skandia as a client on its hostile bid from financial services group Old Mutual and acted on a major deal for much-coveted Macquarie, a top Linklaters client, on its £950m acquisition of Dyno Nobel. Add these to roles on top-end deals for a surprisingly wide range of clients and the firm appears to be one of the few to have raised its market share of UK M&A significantly in the past year.

Perhaps the main difficulty for Skadden's 16-partner City arm has been to convince the market it is big enough to cope with large-scale transactions. But clients and rivals concede the firm is still able to turn around even complex transactions with the speed of a much larger City firm.

In the long term Skadden will probably have to broaden its practice somewhat, both in Europe and London, where its business is heavily reliant on the Scott Simpson/Michael Hatchard axis. Indeed, the firm has just hired London corporate partner Adrian Knight from Shearman & Sterling. For now, however, the firm's achievements are impressive. And whatever the size, no-one complained about quality of service. As one rival puts it: "All the evidence suggests Skadden has moved its top M&A franchise to the UK."

The shortlist: Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton (highly commended); Clifford Chance; Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer; Linklaters; Shearman & Sterling.

Mid-Market Corporate Team: Macfarlanes

In a cracking year for mid-market deal teams, the competition was always going to be intense. Given the predicted strong flow of private equity work, a select band of firms genuinely pushed the envelope at the upper end of the market.

Dickson Minto, for example, retained advisory roles on major buy-outs, such as BC Partners' £3bn acquisition of Amadeus, while Travers Smith and Eversheds advised on a £771m acquisition for Peel Holdings and on an Xstrata £923m Canadian deal respectively.

But it was Macfarlanes that deservedly secured the standout role after braving sceptical investment bankers to advise on Pernod Ricard's £7bn acquisition of drinks rival Allied Domecq.

Some questioned the firm's ability to cope with the deal, one of the biggest UK takeovers of recent years, but its performance was ultimately lauded by rivals and clients alike.

Pernod's general counsel, Ian Fitzsimons, was hugely complimentary about the way the firm acquitted itself and one investment banker on the deal adds: "Given Macfarlanes is not a magic circle firm, it never had any quality issues on what was an incredibly complicated deal. In some ways it was more joined-up than a bigger firm."

Corporate partner Tim Lewis, who led the deal, was also strongly commended.

And the firm is no one-trick pony, with Macfarlanes maintaining a regular flow of quality work. Highlights included advising 3i on its partial exit in the £1bn buy-out of Travelex, and the parent company of Energis on its £700m takeover by rival telecoms company Cable & Wireless.

It has to be said though, the feedback was not always first class. People close to one major deal say the firm was hard pressed due to a shortage of people and experience, a reflection perhaps of rivals' claims that in a busy market the firm can struggle to resource deals.

While this played against the firm, the vast majority of feedback, including an excellent showing in the Legal Week Intelligence's client satisfaction survey, was glowing. Not only do clients like the technical skills on offer, but Macfarlanes is lauded for good service, transparency and all-round style.

The firm is currently rounding off the year in with a lead role on the proposed £3.6bn Hilton Hotels Corporation/Hilton Group merger. All this in a year when one of its trophy corporate clients, private equity house Alchemy, was relatively quiet. The shortlist: Berwin Leighton Paisner; Dickson Minto; DLA Piper Rudnick Gray Cary; Eversheds; Travers Smith.

Finance Team: Ashurst

Finance continues to be one of the most dynamic practice areas, as US entrants keep Europe's leading firms on their toes across a range of product lines. Yet, even leaving aside the impact of US firms, there is no shortage of competition within the UK market as ambitious teams challenge traditional market leaders such as Clifford Chance (CC) and Allen & Overy.

Certainly, the consensus from clients is that the larger finance practices, which often rely on high leverage, are vulnerable to competition from partner-led offerings at up-and-coming teams.

Such trends explain the inclusion on the shortlist of Berwin Leighton Paisner and Simmons & Simmons, which both notched up a number of notable deals during the past year. The latter in particular was distinguished by excellent feedback from clients.

Of course, the big firms were not standing still. Last year's winner, Linklaters, put in another polished performance with across-the-board growth in Europe and Asia, while sealing its reputation as the only UK practice currently showing much ambition in US-law finance.

Of the top tier, CC looked the strongest, with a confident run in the reviving securitisation market. But both firms' placings were undermined by clients grumbling about gaps in their ranks of mid-level associates.

In this context it is entirely fitting that Ashurst should take the gong. The team's achievements are considerable, with the finance practice having grown strongly for three years in revenue terms.

It is a case of tight focus paying dividends as Ashurst continues to build its team around its heavyweight acquisition finance and the collateral debt obligation-heavy structured finance team.

And its traditionally strong leveraged finance team did not disappoint with bank roles on high-profile acquisitions such as Amadeus, Saga and SBS Broadcasting, and a secondary role on the landmark SunGard buy-out.

But the bottom line is the feedback from clients, which blew away the competition by a country mile – not bad for a team a quarter of the size of its magic circle competitors.

Ashurst's practice is also marked by the number of partners with a client following, among them Nigel Ward, Mark Vickers, Erica Handling and Helen Burton. Of the younger guard, Chris Georgiou's derivatives practice won a number of admiring mentions.

Client wins included the appointment to Abbey's core panel and this summer's inclusion on Barclays' leveraged finance panel.

The shortlist: Clifford Chance (highly commended); Berwin Leighton Paisner; DLA Piper Rudnick Gray Cary; Linklaters; Shearman & Sterling; Simmons & Simmons.

Property Team: Berwin Leighton Paisner

For a practice area supposedly moving down the radar of big commercial firms, property proves a remarkably open field.

Among the firms not immediately associated with real estate, Allen & Overy, Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer and Norton Rose all turned up on interesting deals this year, winning recognition from clients and peers.

Linklaters' performance on a series of major projects was also a reminder that a firm written off by some remains a towering presence at the upper end of the market.

More notable still is the continued ascent of Herbert Smith, which secured a string of development roles, including the £1.5bn redevelopment of Elephant & Castle.

With the firm, which has forged a reputation for successfully targeting the top end of the property market, fresh from launching its French law property practice, Herbies will certainly be one to watch in 2006.

But in the end it was a race between two mid-market thoroughbreds, SJ Berwin and Berwin Leighton Paisner (BLP). If SJ Berwin did not capture the headlines to quite the extent of its rival, for all-round performance it was hard to beat. Deals included advising Axa Real Estate Investment Managers on its £2.5bn property outsourcing portfolio for the Co-operative Insurance Society, sealing two headline sales for Brixton plc and a healthy flow of work for benchmark client British Land.

The team, one of the fastest-growing in the City, also looked strong across a range of areas, including development, funds and planning. However, it was BLP that ultimately edged ahead, not just because it undeniably captured the imagination of the sector, but on the substance of the work and the client feedback. Deal highlights included advising Liverpool City Council on the flagship Paradise Street development, advising Aviva on an £800m acquisition and a substantial planning role on London's successful bid for the 2012 Olympics.

The firm also secured significant instructions from new clients of the calibre of Canary Wharf and Land Securities Trillium and won a lead role on the much-vaunted Wood Wharf regeneration scheme.

The firm's daring recruitment of Clifford Chance partner Robert MacGregor to head its property team in late 2004 is also regarded to have paid dividends in terms of signalling its ambition to the market.

Perhaps understandably considering the firm's investment, the service is becoming more expensive but, for the moment, BLP is deemed worth it.

Clients, and there were plenty of new ones, are impressed. Unfortunately for rivals, the BLP bandwagon is more than just good PR.

The shortlist: SJ Berwin (highly commended); Addleshaw Goddard; Allen & Overy; Herbert Smith; Linklaters.

Partner: Nigel Knowles

A disparate set of candidates for this award highlighted the wide range of situations in which individuals have made a difference within the legal profession.

The 'difference' Tony Angel made as managing partner of Linklaters has been well documented. While his technocratic style has not been to everyone's liking, the approach has clearly borne fruit. David McIntosh should also win plaudits for attempting to transform the City of London Law Society from technical talking-shop to full-throated voice of City law. Osborne Clarke's chief, Simon Beswick, deserves much credit for helping to steady his firm from a legacy of over-expansion and successfully steer it through a prolonged downturn in its core market.

While Janet Gaymer did not inherit a chalice quite so poisoned, her thoughtful and imaginative stewardship of Simmons & Simmons holds hopes that the firm can recover its former glories. The 'Not Afraid Of A Challenge' award would go straight to Peter Crossley, who has manfully assumed the Herculean task of turning around the national giant that is Hammonds.

But after another quiet year for DLA Piper Rudnick Gray Cary's introverted chief executive, 2005 was surely the year for Nigel Knowles to take the prize. It is hard to think of an individual who is as closely identified with the transformation of a legal practice as the man who took over the management of regional stalwart Dibb Lupton Alsop in 1996.

Knowles' flair and ambition has helped to set the firm aside from its rivals, both in the regions and the City. Indeed much of the firm's success comes from Knowles' refusal to be bound by what a UK law firm 'should do', whether it be launching in Europe, merging with a US firm, or hiring a 40-lawyer media team from a City rival.

And like a lot of leaders whose success is based on the vision thing, Knowles has been canny enough to surround himself with talented lawyers and managers to ensure aspiration actually becomes reality. Is there a danger of the limelight going to his head? Possibly, but that does not mean he has not so far got it very right.

The shortlist: Peter Crossley, Hammonds (highly commended); Tony Angel, Linklaters; Simon Beswick, Osborne Clarke; Janet Gaymer, Simmons & Simmons; David McIntosh, City of London Law Society.