Students Finding Certainty in Cert

Who said that law students can’t produce resounding, published work? “Finding Certainty in Cert based on a Statistical Analysis Over 14 Years,” authored by a University of Southern California law scholar, and political science student, confirmed that a notably small handful of elite attorneys hold outsized sway with the United States Supreme Court. http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2715631 In an analysis of the 93,000 certiorari petitions filed at the Court over a 14-year period (2001-2015), the study found that an elite group of 66 of the 17,000 lawyers who petitioned for cert were six times more likely to be successful than their peers. http://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/scotus/

Jeffrey Fisher of the Stanford Law School’s Supreme Court Litigation Clinic achieved the highest rate of success (29.1%), followed by Seth Waxman of Wilmer Cutler (26.4%), and Andrew Pincus of Mayor Brown (25.9%). Several other well-known litigators, including Theodore Olson and Carter Phillips, also made the list. Moreover, Miguel Estrada, former U.S. Assistant Solicitor General had a record of defeating 91% of cert petitions for respondent clients. http://blogs.reuters.com/alison-frankel/2016/01/22/want-to-get-your-case-to-the-supreme-court-new-study-tells-you-which-lawyers-to-hire/