This year’s U.S. Supreme Court term lacks the high-stakes drama of last year’s row over the Affordable Care Act, which seemed to attract briefs from every appellate shop around. There’s still plenty to get excited about, however, as demonstrated by the cases we highlight in The National Law Journal‘s Appellate Hot List.

We’ve identified 20 firms doing killer appellate work before the Supreme Court, federal circuit courts of appeal and state courts of last resort. We asked our readers to nominate firms with at least one significant appellate win between May 2012 and May 2013 and that had an impressive track record overall. We supplemented this material with our own reporting to settle on the firms listed below.