National law firm, Gateley has been named 'Best Legal Adviser' in an independent report on client satisfaction. The top 50 firm, which has offices in Birmingham, achieved the top score for personal/partner relationships in the Legal Week Intelligence Client Satisfaction Report 2011. The report assesses client satisfaction levels within 75 law firms by surveying more than 1,000 senior in-house lawyers.

In the national category the firm also beat benchmarks for commercial and legal advice, IT/knowledge management and service delivery. Clients were most impressed with the firm's in-depth knowledge of their sectors, flexibility and approachable nature.

The news comes as Gateley breaks through the £2 billion barrier for aggregate value of corporate deal transactions. This follows a successful year which saw the company post a record increase in turnover attributed to the opening of its Manchester office in July 2010. The firm also entered the top 50 UK law firms by revenue for the first time and rose from a position of 20 to 8 in the Experian Corpfin national league table of corporate deals.

Commenting on the results, Michael Ward the firm's senior partner and head of Gateley's corporate team, said: "2011 proved to be one of the most challenging years that law firms and their clients have faced in recent times and client satisfaction has never been more important.

"We pride ourselves on understanding our clients' businesses and aspirations and we look to provide commercial, legal advice that is relevant to our clients' needs. As reflected in the results of this survey, client care is a top priority for us and we 're delighted to have been recognised for our success in this area with such a high national position in a well regarded industry report."

The Legal Week Intelligence report is in its eighth year and gathers responses from senior heads of legal at companies who are making decisions about the hiring of law firms for external legal advice. It assesses criteria including quality of legal and commercial advice, service delivery, partner relationships, cost and billing transparency and use of technology. The top five highest scoring law firms are awarded the accreditation of 'Best Legal Adviser' for the next 12 months.