Six checks stand between a company and a place on our lists

Before anything else, the company has to exist legally. We confirm it in Georgia's public business registry — legal entity, identification number, registration date, current status — and where the profession requires a licence, we check the register that holds it: bar membership, auditor certification, brokerage licence.

Years in operation, the volume and kind of work actually completed, and the specialisms a firm can prove rather than claim. We look for the pattern: a firm that has handled your situation a hundred times is worth more to you than a generalist with a better website.

Google reviews weighed for volume, recency and pattern — not the average alone. Then the part no rating captures: what the expat and local communities actually say about a firm when nobody is marketing to them, in the groups and threads where people report back after the fact.

We contact every firm the way a client would: an ordinary question from an ordinary address, no press introduction, no disclosure. We record who replies, how fast, in which language, and whether the answer is clear or a runaround. In Tbilisi this single check separates more firms than any other.

Firms that quote clearly outrank firms that "it depends" you to death. We ask what the work costs, what’s included, what’s billed at cost, and whether any of it goes in writing before money moves. Nobody is penalised for being expensive — only for being vague.

Every list carries the date it was last checked. Each quarter we re-run the response test, re-read the reviews, re-confirm registration and licences, and re-order the list on what we find. Firms that slipped get dropped, and better ones move up into the space.