Exhibit numbering gaps are a completely avoidable RFE trigger

This one shows up constantly and has nothing to do with the strength of your case — it's a bookkeeping problem. If your exhibits are numbered 1 through 12, but exhibit 7 is referenced nowhere in the petition, or the petition cites "Exhibit 9" and there's no exhibit 9 in the file, that gap gets flagged before a reviewer even gets to the substance. The fix is mechanical, which is exactly why it's worth doing carefully: - Every exhibit in your table of contents should be referenced somewhere in the petition body - Every exhibit cited in the petition body should exist in the file, numbered to match - If you renumber anything late in the process (adding or removing an exhibit), re-check every cross-reference — this is where gaps usually get introduced, not at the first draft It's a small thing to get wrong and a slow thing to catch by re-reading, which is exactly the kind of check that's better done systematically than by eye.