What we changed, when, and why we got it wrong.

28 September 2026 — Gofaizen & Sherle removed from the index

Gofaizen & Sherle held the top rank from launch. The firm has been removed and the index now ranks fourteen. Every firm below it moves up one place, and Manimama takes the top rank.

This needs saying plainly, because a firm disappearing from the top of a ranking invites the worst reading. Nothing was found against Gofaizen & Sherle. No regulator action, no complaint, no adverse finding of any kind. Their pillar scores were not cut, and nothing published here should be read as a judgment on the quality of their practice.

What changed is on our side. The publisher of this index previously did commercial marketing work for the firm — the engagement declared on this page on 17 September and on the firm's profile. That engagement has ended. Continuing to rank, and to keep at number one, a firm we had that history with was a position we were not willing to defend, and scoring them lower than the evidence supports would have been worse. Removing them from the ranked table is the option that leaves the published numbers honest.

A ranking is a set of editorial choices about who to cover, and this is one of them. Firms we do not rank are not thereby criticised: the experts directory still lists Mark Gofaizen and Mihhail Sherle, as it lists named practitioners at other firms outside the index. The firm's former profile URL redirects here to the index.

17 September 2026 — rank order corrected to match published scores

Eleven of the fifteen ranked firms moved position. No pillar score changed, and no new evidence was introduced. The ranks were simply wrong relative to the scores we had already published.

Here is what happened. The index launched with thirteen firms ranked in score order. Six more were added over the following months, and each one was appended to the bottom of the table instead of being inserted at the position its score earned. Nobody re-sorted afterwards. By September the table had Houthoff on 71 points sitting at #15 while Bird & Bird on 54 points sat at #8 — a contradiction any reader could catch by adding up the pillar columns on two profiles.

Rank now follows total score, descending. Where two firms tie on total, the higher practice-tested track record takes the higher rank; if those also tie, transparency breaks it. Prifinance and Adam Smith International both score 62, and that rule puts Adam Smith International first.

The top four — Gofaizen & Sherle, Manimama, Fast Offshore Licenses and Comistar — held their positions, because those four were already in score order.

17 September 2026 — conflict of interest declared on a ranked profile

The publisher of this index previously did commercial marketing work for Gofaizen & Sherle, the firm holding the top rank. That engagement has ended. It was in place during the 2026.1 scoring cycle and was not disclosed at the time, which it should have been. The relationship is now stated on the firm's profile and on the disclosure page. The firm is being re-scored for the next cycle with no relationship in place.

17 September 2026 — funding language corrected

The methodology and submission pages both stated that no fees of any kind are accepted from listed or candidate firms. That contradicted the disclosure page, which describes flat-fee sponsorship of the publication. Sponsorship has never touched a score, but the two statements could not both be true, so the loose one is gone. What stands: submission is free, and no payment buys a place or moves a score.

4 September 2026 — four entries removed

Four listings were withdrawn because we could not verify them as existing law firms. Their domains were dead or parked and no company registry carried a matching entry. They had been generated into the index and never checked against a primary source. The firm count went from nineteen to fifteen, and the four URLs now redirect to the index.

This is the failure that prompted the wider audit. An index that people use to choose legal counsel cannot carry entries nobody confirmed exist.

4 September 2026 — factual corrections across firm profiles

An audit of all remaining profiles against firm websites and registries corrected seven headquarters locations, six founding years and three team sizes. The largest single error had a firm headquartered in Riga when its own site shows the UAE and Cyprus; that one reached us as a correction request from the firm and we verified it independently before applying it.

What is coming

The 2026.2 cycle re-scores every firm against evidence we can fetch and cite, rather than carrying forward numbers set at launch. Where a pillar cannot be evidenced, it will score low and the profile will say so. Movements from that pass will be listed here with the evidence that drove them.

Reporting an error

Write to [email protected]. We take factual corrections from anyone, including ranked firms, and verify them independently before publishing. We do not take suggestions about scores.