The lawyer-rating service Super Lawyers today won a U.S. patent on its system for rating excellence within the legal profession. The patent, which is number 8,412,564, makes Super Lawyers the first lawyer-rating service to receive this unique distinction. Super Lawyers is owned by Thomson Reuters.

The abstract for the patent describes it as follows:

The present invention provides for a system and method of identifying excellence within a profession. In one embodiment, excellent performing candidates within a profession group are identified by creating a candidate pool from independent research and a peer nomination process. Identified candidates then obtain a score according to an independent research and objective evaluation process. Peer evaluators contribute to this score by evaluating top-scoring candidates, and a total score is compiled for each identified candidate. Candidates with scores in a top percentage of the candidates are then recognized as demonstrating excellent performance in the profession group.

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