FT Innovative Lawyers Awards is a annual industry award recognizing excellence in Legal. Organized by Financial Times & RSGI, it covers the Global region. Established in 2006.
The FT Innovative Lawyers programme was founded in 2006 by Reena SenGupta, executive director of London-based legal research agency RSGI, and its results are published annually in the Financial Times. It is not a conventional entry-and-judging contest: RSGI's researchers conduct thousands of interviews each year across more than 500 law firms and in-house legal teams in some 40 countries, testing every submission for originality, leadership and impact rather than relying on self-reported claims. The programme runs three regional editions — Europe, North America and Asia-Pacific — and attracts over 1,000 submissions a year.
Work is assessed across eight areas: practice innovation, responsible business, people and skills, knowledge and data, business transformation, intrapreneurs, individual practitioners and in-house teams. Ranked entries appear in FT special reports (64 published to date), and headline awards go to the most innovative law firms and in-house teams in each region — Freshfields and National Grid took top honours in Europe in 2025, while Mallesons and DBS Bank led Asia-Pacific in 2026. Because results run in the Financial Times and every ranking is research-verified, a strong showing carries weight with clients and boards, not just within the profession.
Submissions go through RSGI's online portal on rolling regional windows: North America opens in June (10 July deadline in 2026), Europe closes in spring ahead of the September awards evening at London's Natural History Museum (around 500 attendees), and Asia-Pacific awards are presented in May. Strong entries describe one genuinely novel piece of work with measurable impact and name referees — often clients — who will actually respond to researcher interviews; RSGI publishes a submission guide with categories, criteria and worked examples each cycle.