The DJ's Emily Green starts us off with Changes Ahead at State High Court as Justice Prepares to Leave, noting that Justice Kennard "leaves at a particularly busy time" and most of her staff attorneys are expected to retire as well. The article explains that appellate justices are called up in alphabetical order to pro tem, with the next justice on deck being the 3d DCA's William Murray.
"Unlike in ages past ... even a Daniel Webster cannot salvage a case submitted today on bloated or muddled briefing."
Next, Nat Garrett of Jones Day (America's largest law firm, according to Law360's ranking) offers In Today's Appellate Advocacy, Talk is Cheap (which does not address law firm billing rates), recounts how over the past two centuries, "appellate argument has transitioned from oral presentation to the written word." "According to Professor Suzanne Ehrenberg of Chicago-Kent College of Law, the history of appellate practice in 19th-century America showed 'a movement from the use of oral argument as the court's principal means of learning about a case, with the brief as a supplement, to the use of oral argument as a supplement to the brief.'"
As we so often hear, "the brief is where an appeal is won or lost."
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