In our second year of the expanded Best Legal Departments package— last year we jumped the number of departments we honored from one to four—we received the deepest and widest set of submissions yet. The number was up substantially, the quality seemed better, and the range of departments was as broad as we’d hoped.

We heard from lawyers at huge multinationals that are household names, from small start-ups we’d never heard of, and from more than a few nonprofits. We did our best to examine each on its own terms. From these we chose finalists, and each was asked to submit detailed information. It wasn’t easy to select the four departments featured in these pages, but we feel comfortable with our choices. And, like last year’s, each one is distinct, and represents a novel twist on the state of the art.