Approval rates
When evaluating your claim, it is helpful to look at how Judge Knowles compares to broader benchmarks. His lifetime approval rate of 56% is identical to the latest Houston-Bissonnet Hearing Office average and trails the 58% national average by 2 percentage points. These figures are derived from a significant docket of 13,793 lifetime decisions accumulated over 5 years on the bench. Aggregate rates describe past decisions, not predictions for your individual hearing.
Office- and national-level breakdowns of fully favorable vs denial rates aren't currently published by SSA in the per-office disposition data. The judge's own breakdown is the detail we have today.
Approval rate over time
Year-over-year approval rate across Judge Knowles's docket. Annual rates fluctuate with the mix of cases SSA assigns; the longer-run pattern is more informative than any single year.
Decision pattern
Over his 5-year tenure, Judge Knowles has shown a varied approval trend. His yearly approval rates fluctuated from a low of 50% in 2020 to a high of 61% in 2017. Following a period of relative stability between 2018 and 2019, the most recent data indicates a shift in the approval pattern. This variance often reflects changes in the complexity of cases or the quality of medical evidence presented during those specific periods.
Preparing for an SSDI hearing
The guidance below applies to any SSDI hearing, not specifically to Judge Knowles's bench. Judge-specific preparation guidance requires a corpus of public Appeals Council decisions involving each judge, which we haven't built yet.
- Bring a clean treating-physician record. Longitudinal primary-care or specialist notes spanning the disability period, with consistent symptom documentation, are typically the strongest evidence at hearing. A single month's records usually aren't enough.
- Don't rely on consultative exams alone. If your medical evidence is built primarily around a one-time CE finding, expect detailed questioning. Supplement with treating-source statements where possible.
- Prepare for daily-activity questions. Have honest, specific answers about a typical day. Answers that conflict with the medical record (in either direction) tend to hurt credibility.
- Expect transferable-skills probing. A vocational expert will usually testify about jobs available to someone with your limitations. Your representative should be prepared to cross-examine.
Hearing scheduled?
About the Houston-Bissonnet hearing office
The Houston-Bissonnet Hearing Office serves a large population of claimants across the region. With a bench of 6 judges, the office manages a high volume of cases to ensure timely processing of disability claims. The office currently maintains an approval rate of 56%, consistent with national trends for urban hearing centers. You can see the Houston-Bissonnet Hearing Office page for the full ALJ roster.
Other judges at this hearing office
The Social Security Administration uses a workload-balancing algorithm to assign cases, meaning your assignment to a specific judge is essentially random. Within the Houston-Bissonnet Hearing Office, lifetime approval rates among the bench range from 44% to 72%. Because of this wide variance, understanding the general environment of your hearing office is useful. For preparation purposes, the guidance is the same regardless of which judge you are assigned.
Your odds change dramatically with a lawyer
Source: U.S. Government Accountability Office, GAO-18-37. The 3× gap is a population-wide average across all judges; individual outcomes vary.