FirmScopeCounts are live from the database, not hardcoded.
- 1
Sourced, then verified by hand
Every firm starts as a candidate from public sources. Before it is listed, we check its website ourselves: the firm must be real, active, based in the city we file it under, and actually working in that vertical.
- 2
Firms that fail verification are excluded
Candidates with no working website, or where we can't confirm what the firm does, never enter the directory. They sit in a review queue instead of being padded into the numbers.
- 3
Every firm is strategy-tagged
Each listing carries a focus tag (deal type, stage, strategy or practice area) taken from what the firm itself says it does, so filters reflect reality rather than guesswork.
- 4
User submissions are reviewed before listing
Members can submit firms we have missed. Submissions go to a staging queue and are only added after an admin verifies them the same way, never automatically.
- 5
Contacts, labelled by how they were sourced
Where a firm publishes a named person or a direct inbox, the listing carries it - a name and role, a LinkedIn profile, an email where one is public. Each contact is labelled verified, pattern or generic so you know exactly what you are sending to, and contact reveals are metered per plan rather than dumped in bulk.
- 6
No inflated numbers
The counts on this page are computed live from the database, as they are on the pricing page and the directories. We do not publish invented user counts or fabricated testimonials anywhere on this site.
Why these firms
Small enough to reach the person who decides
Size. FirmScope deliberately indexes boutiques, not bulge brackets. Every firm carries a headcount band and the database skews hard toward the smallest one: 17,164 of the 26,097 firms have between two and ten people. At that size there is no HR layer between you and the partners, and one good email goes straight to the person who would hire you.
No formal hiring process. Most of these firms do not run graduate schemes, structured application windows or assessment centres. They hire when a deal closes, a client lands or a partner gets too busy, and they usually hire the person who was already in their inbox. That is the gap this database exists to close: the role is real, it just never gets written up.
Not on job boards. Because the hiring is ad hoc, the roles are rarely advertised publicly. You will not find them on LinkedIn Jobs, university portals or the big aggregators, which is why a directory of the firms themselves is the only reliable way in. We list the firm and its focus so you can pick the right ones, rather than waiting for a posting that will not come.
Cold-emailable. Small firms read their own inboxes. Where a firm publishes a named person or a direct address we carry it, labelled verified, pattern or generic so you know what you are sending to; where it does not, the website and LinkedIn page are one click away and the email templates fill themselves from the firm profile. A short, specific note to a partner at a ten-person firm gets read in a way an application to a thousand-person one never will.
What that means for you
- Every listed firm has been looked at by a person, not just scraped.
- Focus tags and filters map to what firms actually do.
- When a count says 2,665 corporate law firms, it means 2,665 verified ones.