Best States for Business, Ranked by Lawyers

Savvy founders and entrepreneurs ask which states have fair legal systems and competent, impartial judges, because they know the state in which they incorporate matters. Some states are well-known to be more attractive to business than others.

For years, information about state legal systems was anecdotal. However, in 2002, a non-profit organization known as ILR or the Institute for Legal Reform, began asking corporate attorneys to assess the state systems in which they work, to publish a report known as The Lawsuit Climate Survey: Ranking the States, identifying the best states for business based on the legal climate.

The results of thee 2019 Report are out. In this comprehensive survey, focusing on fairness and reasonableness of state legal systems, Delaware ranks #1.

In terms of overall state rankings, after Delaware as the top state for business, Maine is in the number two spot, followed by Connecticut, then Wyoming and Alaska rounding out the top 5.

And at the bottom of the list are some of the largest states in the nation—New York is ranked 36, Texas is ranked 38, Florida is ranked 46, and California comes in at 48, barely beating out Louisiana and Illinois who take the title of the worst ranking of all the states.

Delaware ranks first in eight of the 10 categories:

• Enforcing Meaningful Venue Requirements
• Overall Treatment of Tort and Contract Litigation
• Treatment of Class Action Suits and Mass Consolidation Suits
• Damages
• Scientific and Technical Evidence
• Trial Judges’ Impartiality
• Trial Judges’ Competence
• Quality of Appellate Review

Here is how the survey is designed. Attorneys are asked to evaluate their opinions of each state’s liability procedure, using a numeric ranking of significant elements. Those surveyed were part of a “national sample of 1,307 in-house general counsel, senior litigators or attorneys, and other senior executives at companies with at least $100 million in annual revenues who indicated they: (1) are knowledgeable about litigation matters; and (2) have recent litigation experience in each state they evaluate,” (Executive Summary of Ranking the States, The Lawsuit Climate Survey, p.3).

Wondering where the supposedly-corporate-friendly Nevada ranks? Number 29. As well, it failed to crack the Top 15 in any category. Its highest category ranking was 17^th (in Overall Treatment of Tort and Contract Litigation).

The poor performance of other states puts to rest the notion that they are comparable to the truly corporate-friendly Delaware.