In an article published last year, Judge Richard Posner and Professor Albert Yoon surveyed about 200 federal district court judges on various issues, including the judges overall impression of the quality of legal representation, by civil practice area. The study specifically compared lawyers in cases involving civil rights, commercial litigation, family law, immigration, intellectual property, personal injury/malpractice, and tax/trusts & estates. Amongst these groups, the judges identified intellectual property litigators as the giving the highest impression of quality. In addition, the judges noted their impression that there is not typically any significant disparity in the quality of representation between the intellectual property litigators on any given case.
Read it here: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1668783
