Top Ten Reasons to Hire an Appellate Attorney

1) Skills required for appeals: Appellate Attorneys are different than trial attorneys. The appellate process is different than the trial process and requires a different set of skills.  Specifically, writing a brief that is persuasive and using the process of oral argument to the benefit of your client.

2) Knowing the deadlines of an appeal: an important aspect of appellate practice is knowing the various deadlines of both the State and Federal Courts. The deadlines differ for Civil and Criminal cases.  Knowing the deadline for perfecting an appeal is obviously the most critical part of appeals practice, and the first step to winning the appeal is getting it to the appellate judges in a timely manner.

3) Knowing Appellate Procedure: Every appellate court has its own set of procedural rules that must be followed to the letter.  The procedures are prodigiously complex and can devolve into minutiae such as the size of the font used in the brief, the size of the margins on the pages of the brief, the number of pages and words used in the brief.  Each appellate court has its own rules and they must be followed to the letter.

4) Expanding the lower court record when necessary: sometimes legal issues are not raised at trial.  This is especially true in criminal cases.  Knowing how to expand the lower court record to include additional issues so that they may be argued on appeal is crucial.  An experienced appellate lawyer is intimately familiar with this process and how to make it work for the client.

5) Spotting the issues: one of the most important jobs that an appellate attorney performs is the process of perusing the trial transcript of the lower court proceedings and looking for legal issues that will give the client a chance for success on appeal.  This is where the appellate attorney excels like no other.  Analyzing the lower court’s record and finding the issues that will be presented to the appellate court is crucial to any appeal.

6) Knowing which issues are best to present to the appellate court: In every trial there are legal issues that arise.  Either the Judge was mistaken on a point of law or the prosecutor, or maybe even your own lawyer.  The Appellate attorney will know which of these are the best to present to the appellate court i.e. which are more likely to yield the greatest success for the client.

7) Writing a brief that is persuasive: The principal part of any appeal is the brief; framing the legal issues for the appellate court to decide is just as important as finding the issue in the record.  Knowing how to construct the brief so that it presents all the necessary legal issues in a way that is persuasive is the critical first step to winning the case.

8) Conducting persuasive oral argument: oral argument is a unique phenomenon that occurs only at the appellate level.  When the attorney has the chance to speak to and persuade the judges that will decide the clients case, this is a golden opportunity.  Many times inexperienced attorneys will waive oral argument.  This is truly a mistake.  The oral argument is the interactive process where the judges reveal their thinking and is the perfect opportunity to persuade judges and address their concerns on the legal issues.

9) Motion practice in the appellate courts: most lawyers are not aware that motion practice at the appellate level can be quite extensive.  Knowing how to handle motion practice, and more importantly how to avoid motion practice, is an important part of the appellate process that must be handled by an experienced appellate lawyer.

10) Taking the case to the next level: sometimes it is necessary to take the appeal to the next level in the appellate process. Every level of appellate courts, whether it is the New York Court of Appeals, one of the Federal Circuit Courts or the United States Supreme Court, have their own special set of procedural rules. Knowing the procedure and the steps that are necessary to bring the client to the next level of appellate courts in a way that is timely and persuasive is the craft of the appellate lawyer.