How VA appeals turned out by representative type
Board of Veterans' Appeals decisions where the appellant's representative type could be identified, 1992-2018. These are historical aggregate rates describing groups of appeals, not predictions for any individual claim; RateMyVSO is not accredited to represent veterans, prepare claims, or recommend a representative.
Win rate (of decided) by representation
Of issues the Board actually decided one way or the other (excluding remands), the share that were granted.
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Win rate (of decided) by representation, by condition
Same metric, narrowed to one condition at a time.
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Overall outcomes by representative
A different metric than the win-rate charts above: the share of decisions (not individual issues) that contained at least one issue of each type. Many appeals raise several issues, so a single decision can count toward more than one column, and the three middle columns can sum above 100%. See why we report it this way.
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Many BVA appeals raise multiple issues. The three middle columns show the share of decisions where at least one issue was granted, denied, or remanded, so they can sum above 100%.
Methodology and caveats
Where does this data come from?
The Board of Veterans' Appeals publishes every decision it issues. Our weekly cron bva-fetch-new ingests them into a searchable database. The appellant's representative is parsed from the REPRESENTATION caption that appears near the top of each pre-AMA decision.
Why only 1992-2018?
The Appeals Modernization Act (AMA) took effect in 2019 and the published decision text format no longer prints the appellant's representative field, so 2019-present decisions are excluded from every chart and table on this page. On the other end, 1992 is simply the earliest year our corpus has decisions with a parseable representative field; there is no deliberate lower cutoff.
How is "win rate" different from "Overall outcomes by representative"?
They answer different questions from the same underlying field. Win rate (the two charts up top) is issue-grain: granted ÷ (granted + denied), counting each argued issue separately and excluding remands from the denominator entirely. Overall outcomes (the table) is decision-grain: the share of whole decisions that contained at least one granted issue, at least one denied issue, or at least one remanded issue, which is why those three columns can add up past 100%. Neither is more "correct"; win rate answers "how often does this type of issue succeed," overall outcomes answers "how often does an appeal come back with at least some good news."
How are buckets defined?
The four largest national VSOs (DAV, VFW, American Legion, AMVETS) each have their own bucket. Attorneys and claims agents are pooled. State Veterans Affairs offices are pooled. Decisions with no REPRESENTATION block in the published text are counted as Pro Se (matches BVA convention; a small share may be parsing failures).
Why do the "Overall outcomes" percentages sum above 100%?
Most BVA appeals raise more than one issue. A single decision can grant one issue, deny another, and remand a third. We report the share of decisions where at least one issue received each outcome, rather than forcing every decision into a single bucket.
Can these numbers tell me how my claim will turn out?
No. These are historical aggregate rates across hundreds of thousands of different appeals, decided by hundreds of different judges under different rules over more than two decades. Every individual claim turns on its own evidence and law. We publish these aggregates so you can see what has happened, not predict what will happen. AMA-era decisions (2019-present) are not included in any figure on this page.