Passle, the company behind the findings, claims that its research is evidence of the "democratising impact of social media", which is allowing smaller firms to make a mark on clients without a substantial budget. Each firm in the top 200 were ranked against seven criteria before coming to an overall score. They were: the number of 'knowledge pieces' published; the number of pieces per lawyer; the number of Twitter followers; the number of tweets; the number of Twitter followers per lawyer; the number of tweets per lawyer; and, each firm's Klout (an app that uses social media analytics to rank its users) score.