Police in 2007 publicly identified Mr Rayney as the "prime" and only suspect, weeks after his wife Corryn was found buried in a shallow grave at Kings Park.
He was charged with her murder in 2010 but acquitted by a judge two years later.
Mr Rayney sued the state of WA for defamation and was awarded $2.6 million in damages.
He was also cleared of illegally intercepting his wife's phone calls but was later found to have secretly recorded her conversations and given false evidence about iin court, leading to him being struck off as a lawyer in 2020.
Mr Rayney argued his damages award should be increased by more than $2 million to reflect additional financial losses across a total of four years.
But the WA Court of Appeal on Tuesday rejected the bid, finding that the defamatory statement had not been the cause of Mr Rayney's losses during the relevant periods.
During the first period between December 2010 and November 2012, Mr Rayney was before the courts and barred from appearing in most jury trials.
Potential clients and solicitors would have recognised "it would not be in (their) best interests" to engage a barrister facing a murder charge, the appeal judges said.
During the second period from February 2016 to January 2018, he was allowed to practise but had "effectively been out of the legal market" for around five years.
"Even though he had been acquitted of murder, the fact that he had been charged, and the attendant publicity of the trial, would inevitably have left an enduring impression on solicitors," the judges said.
They noted Mr Rayney had also been the subject of serious adverse findings from the trial judge who found he had engaged in "discreditable" conduct.
The judges awarded him an additional $121,831 in interest after finding the initial sum had not been correctly calculated.
Police in 2016 completed a cold case review of Ms Rayney's murder after investigating dozens of people and reviewing thousands of exhibits.
The killing of the mother-of-two remains unsolved.
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