A Birmingham-based firm has Britain’s top legal website according to a new survey that names and shames the country’s best — and worst — law sites.

Wragge & Co was the overall winner in the survey, which assessed the 50 fastest growing British law firms, with a score of 84 per cent.

The survey, conducted by Intendance, an online consultancy, scored legal websites against four categories: content, usability, design and marketing, giving an aggregate score out of 100.

Wragge & Co was four points ahead of Simmons & Simmons, the City firm, in second place. Fellow London rivals Linklaters and SJ Berwin were joint third with 80 per cent..

The report highlights the "perpetual tensions" between the four individual categories.

"User-friendliness may reduce design coherence, comprehensive content may threaten usability and good marketing may be difficult to achieve in the face of all these," Jame Tuke, head of research at Intendance, said.

"Wragge & Co is to be congratulated on a successful juggling act," he added.

At the other end of the table Howard Kennedy, a West End corporate firm, scored the lowest in each individual category to take the overall bottom spot with just 34 per cent. Other poor performers include Berrymans Lace Mawer, 49 per cent and DMH Stallard, also 49 per cent. Intendance said the three bottom performers have website redesigns either pending or imminent.

Intendance also surveyed which, and how many, staff members were responsible for websites at various firms and found a strong correlation between partner involvement and website performance.

The four firms which said partner involvement in their websites was rare were all ranked in the bottom ten, while the four firms where partners had regular involvement all featured in the top 10.

"What lawyers spend on their websites can make a difference, but without partner involvement the site can easily flounder," Tuke said.

Tony Williams, managing director of Jomati, the legal consultancy and former managing partner of Clifford Chance, said: "The value of an effective website has never been higher. It is no longer sufficient for a website to merely contain boring boilerplate information about a firm. The quality of the information on the firm, its clients and the work it does together with imaginative and relevant legal content is increasingly important."

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