For firms and legal businesses
Register the practice, not just the practitioner.
A law firm, a chambers, an arbitration chamber, a conveyancing practice, a forensic accounting firm, an investigations agency, a tax adviser, a legal technology company or a training provider. If your business serves the legal sector, it can be listed here under its own name.
What a listed practice gets.
The practice is the thing a client is buying
Most legal work in this market is bought from a firm rather than from a person. A client asks who their family used, and the answer is a name over a door. Listing the practice puts that name where it is searched for, with the people inside it attached rather than scattered.
Checked, and the check is published
Incorporation, indemnity cover and tax clearance from every practice, and the regulator's registration and the principal's certificate from the ones held to a profession. Each read by a person, one file at a time, with the expiry taken off the paper rather than from what the practice typed.
Your registration number, in the open
It is published on the practice page on purpose. It is the one thing a client can take to the regulator and check without asking us, which is worth more than any badge we print beside it.
One roster, two signatures
You invite a practitioner and they accept, or they ask and you accept. Nothing appears on either page until both have agreed, so nobody's name can be used to advertise a practice they never joined.
Offices, not an address field
A head office in Harare and a branch in Bulawayo are two addresses and one practice. A client filtering by city finds the branch.
Your people keep their own standing
Every practitioner on the roster is verified on their own certificate and keeps their own profile, fees, diary and rating. A client books the person. The practice is how they found them.
What counts as a practice
Not only law firms.
The legal sector is more than the practices that appear in court. An arbitration chamber, the forensic accountant who traces the money, the agency that serves the summons, the company that builds the software and the provider that trains the juniors are all businesses a client here deals with. Each one registers under its own kind and is read against what that kind is actually held to.
A regulated practice names the professions it covers, because the profession is the standard its people are checked against. A business whose work is not one of those professions does not have to invent one.
Law firm
A registered legal practice.
Chambers
Advocates practising in association.
Conveyancing practice
A practice whose main work is transfer and title.
Notarial practice
Notarial and estates work.
Forensic accounting practice
Investigation, tracing and expert accounting evidence.
Debt recovery practice
Collections and enforcement.
Company secretarial practice
Formation, registers and statutory filing.
Arbitration chamber
A panel practising as arbitrators.
Mediation practice
A practice offering mediation.
Legal consultancy
Advisory work outside a regulated practice.
Process serving agency
Service of process, tracing and field work.
Investigations agency
Corporate investigations, surveillance and evidence gathering.
Tax advisory practice
Tax planning, disputes and revenue authority representation.
Insolvency and business rescue
Liquidation, judicial management and restructuring.
Intellectual property practice
Trade marks, patents, copyright and enforcement.
Immigration and permits consultancy
Residence, work permits and citizenship applications.
Legal technology company
Software, data and systems built for legal work.
Legal training provider
Continuing education, examinations coaching and in house training.
Legal publishing and research
Law reports, precedents, research and drafting resources.
Compliance consultancy
Tax clearance, AML and KYC, data protection and other regulatory compliance.
Litigation support and e-discovery
Document review, e-discovery and contract review for litigation and transactions.
Expert witness services
Engineers, medical and technical experts who give opinion evidence and testimony.
Litigation and case funders
Funding a claim or a defence in exchange for a share of its proceeds.
Other legal business
A business serving the legal sector that none of the above describes.
Something else? Register under Other legal business and tell us what it is. The list is a table rather than a fixed set, so a kind that keeps coming up gets its own entry.
Registering as a compliance consultancy? See the eight areas WLS breaks compliance work into, so a client reads the same vocabulary your own page will use.
The papers
What we ask to see.
The practice's own incorporation, indemnity and tax papers were checked by World Legal Services, and its registration with the regulator where its work is one of the professions. Each practitioner on the roster is verified separately, on their own certificate.
Every file is read on its own and carries its own expiry, taken off the document rather than from a form. Nothing is public while the record is being read, and a practice that is asked for a better copy of one paper does not start again.
- 01Certificate of incorporationEvery practiceOr the partnership deed for a practice that is not a company.
- 02Registration with the regulatorRegulated practices onlyThe firm's own registration, not a practitioner's certificate.
- 03Principal's practising certificateRegulated practices onlyThe certificate of the practitioner answerable for the practice.
- 04Professional indemnity certificateEvery practiceCover current at the date of listing.
- 05Tax clearance (ITF263)Every practice
A law firm files all five. An investigations agency, a training provider or a legal technology company files the first three, because the other two presuppose a regulator and a practising certificate that a business of that kind does not have and should not be asked to invent.
A person reads these. Nothing here checks a registration number against a register or proves a certificate was not altered, and a page that prints a badge should say so.
How it goes.
- 01
Create your account. It is yours as a person, and the practice hangs off it, so you can run a practice and hold your own profile at the same time.
- 02
Open the practice record. Name, kind, registration number, offices, and the line a client reads on the board. Fill it in over several sittings if you need to.
- 03
File the papers and build the roster. Invite the practitioners who work there. Somebody with no account on this platform can be named as staff, with a title and no badge.
- 04
Hand it in. An administrator reads the record and every document, and either lists it or says exactly what is missing.
