IFLR is delighted to announce its first ever Sub-Saharan Africa Awards.
Deadline for entries: July 14
Shortlist publication: mid-August
Winners announcement: September 10
The awards will use the latest IFLR1000 submissions made by law firms across the region, along with awards-specific nominations from international and national firms as the basis for the research. IFLR will also speak with leading lawyers and in-house counsel during the research period.
For over 20 years, IFLR has worked with law firms and financial institutions to recognise and celebrate legal innovation and ingenuity in cross-border transactions at our awards ceremonies in New York, Hong Kong SAR, London and Dubai. Our focus for the Sub-Saharan Africa Awards will remain exclusively on transactions that break new legal ground, set market precedents, or introduce new innovations to the legal toolkit.
We understand that in this difficult time law firms will need to lean on independent ratings to drive business. We are committed to expanding our awards coverage to help clients and their law firms to connect. Please subscribe to our new IFLR Awards podcast series on Spotify and Apple podcasts.
Research details
Please refer to the Awards Summary to find out about our methodology and criteria. There will be award for international law firms and teams, national law firms based in the region, individual lawyers and in-house teams.
The IFLR awards will be rewarding the most innovative legal deals, teams and law firms across seven deal categories:
Banking and finance deal/team of the year
Capital markets deal/team of the year
Domestic deal of the year
M&A deal/team of the year
Private equity deal/team of the year
Projects deal/team of the year
Restructuring deal/team of the year
In addition to the above, there are individual categories:
National firm of the year
In-house team of the year
Individual awards: Lawyer of the year, Rising star award, IFLR Woman in business law award
The nomination forms can be found below:
All submissions must be sent to james.wilson@legalmediagroup.com
Important information
We recommend that each firm submit no more than three deals in any one category, using the forms provided.
The deadline for entries is July 14 2020, so please get in touch as soon as possible if you wish to participate.
All deals must have closed between May 31 2019 and May 31 2020 to be relevant for the awards. Deals that do not reach financial close before end-May 2020 will not be considered.
The IFLR awards are based solely on legal innovation; we are interested in deals that break new legal ground and set market precedents. Aside from the domestic market impact category, they are also exclusively for international deals and must have a cross-border element.
As it is the first regional award of its kind, we will adapt throughout the research to be able to recognise the most innovative and dynamic areas for the region. Given this, the final awards categories (firms, teams and deals) may evolve during the process.
Law firms that have made IFLR1000 submissions
For any law firm that has already submitted to the IFLR1000 this year:
You do not need to fill in any of the forms or nominate your firm for any particular award.
We will automatically consider you for all the relevant categories. If you do not make any direct awards nominations, we will base our research on the deals in your IFLR1000 submissions. We may contact you to ask whether you would be interested in providing further information about specific deals.
The shortlisting or awarding of the deal, team and national firm of the year awards will be based solely on the innovative deals that meet the awards criteria and the role that a law firm had on those. Individual awards will also be based on the role those individuals had on the most innovative deals covered in the awards research.
The forms are there in case there is anything specific that you think has award potential for any of the categories but that was not highlighted on your IFLR1000 submissions, and to enable you to make important updates since your submission.
