LexHow we rank Federal Circuit appellate practice.
Six performance signals drawn from CAFC PACER. Appellant and appellee streams, with separate treatment for IPR-origin and ITC-origin appeals.
Draft · Coming 2027Last updated May 14, 2026
Federal Circuit appellate practice is its own discipline. Trial-court win rates don’t predict appellate outcomes. The firms that consistently win at the CAFC are often a different roster from the firms that consistently win at trial.
Every signal traces back to the CAFC’s public PACER docket. We classify each appeal by origin (district court, PTAB, ITC), by panel composition, by outcome (affirmance, reversal, vacatur, Rule 36), and by whether oral argument was held.
This is an early-stage draft. Federal Circuit rankings are planned for the 2027 edition. Methodology feedback is most welcome at this stage — the weight assignments below will be revisited after the next 12 months of decisions are scored.
Six signals. Six weights.
Win rates are weighted by win quality — an affirmance is not the same as a reversal-with-remand.
Appeal volume
Total appeals as lead or co-counsel in the window. Entry threshold.
Win rate by stream
Appellant win rate (reversal/vacatur sought) or appellee win rate (affirmance sought). The dominant signal.
Affirmance/reversal mix
Quality of outcome — a full reversal counts more than a partial vacatur. Rule 36 affirmances are counted with reduced weight.
Rule 36 patterns
How often a firm’s arguments survive into a written opinion vs. get Rule 36’d. A proxy for argument quality at briefing.
Oral argument outcomes
Win rate among appeals that proceeded to oral argument, normalized for panel composition.
Cert petition activity
Successful and unsuccessful Supreme Court certiorari petitions, weighted toward those that produced opinion-level review.
How the math works.
Every signal is normalized within a peer cohort, then weighted into a composite score.
Cohort-relative percentiles, not absolute counts
Within each ranking, firms and attorneys are grouped into two streams (appellant practice, appellee practice) plus three firm-size brackets. Inside each cohort, every signal is converted to a percentile rank.
This is why a 30-attorney specialty boutique can outrank a global AmLaw firm on the same signal — volume alone doesn’t win the comparison.
Weighted blend, capped at 100
Each signal’s percentile is multiplied by its weight, then summed. Final scores are rescaled to a 0–100 range so cross-cohort comparison is meaningful.
Worked example: (0.75 × 25) + (0.68 × 20) + …
What’s included.
- Firms with at least 5 CAFC appeals in the window
- Appeals from district court, PTAB, ITC, and Court of Federal Claims
- Lead and co-lead counsel of record
- Oral argument counsel tracked separately for the OA-outcomes signal
- Amicus participation tracked but not currently weighted
What we don’t measure.
- Regional circuit appeals (CAFC has exclusive patent jurisdiction)
- International appellate work (UPC, China Supreme Court, EPO BoA)
- Cert petitions filed but not granted, unless the petition itself was substantive (e.g., resolved a circuit split)
- PTAB or ITC trial-level work (covered in those methodologies)
- Amicus-only practice without counsel of record cases
What changed — and when.
Methodology changes are dated and archived. The Draft v0.1 edition remains accessible exactly as published.