What I wish someone had told me about picking which criteria to lead with

Spent a long time assuming the order criteria appear in the regulation was the order to present them in the petition. Nothing wrong with that order specifically, but I hadn't questioned it, and once I did, restructuring around my actual strongest evidence first made a real difference in how the petition read. The thinking that changed my mind: a reviewer forms an impression as they read, and leading with your strongest, most clearly-documented criterion sets a different tone than leading with your weakest one, even if both are eventually presented. I moved my strongest criterion (originally third in my draft, following the regulatory order) to open the evidence section, and reorganized the rest roughly by strength rather than regulatory sequence. Worth being clear this isn't a hard rule — some petitioners have a natural narrative logic that doesn't map to "strongest first," and that's a legitimate choice too. But it's worth being a deliberate choice, not just defaulting to the order the regulation happens to list things in.