In The Recorder, Justice Beds presents My Insurance Notice, where he insists that "I am not yet to the point where I cannot read my own mail—despite what you may have heard from the appellate lawyers." His point is "we all need to rethink our pre-conceptions about age and the aging process. They are—in large measure—themselves superannuated." And his "big finish" is "Do not lose sight of the fact that, as a lawyer, your audience will usually be old people or nonlawyers." For oral advocacy, this means: "Slow down. It makes your argument easier to understand, it makes you appear more relaxed and therefore more confident, and it will disguise those awful moments when you can’t remember how you meant to finish the sentence when you started it."The DJ's Exceptionally Appealing column addresses judicial notice on appeal (with an MCLE test).
Moskovitz on Appeal offers Not My Style, with points out that the Advisory Committee comment to Rule 8.204 states that "[Appellate] Brief writers are encourage to follow the citation form of the California Style Manual (4th ed. 2000)." But using the CSM can add unnecessary bulk to a brief. Is it really necessary to put all citations in parentheses? And to use "pp." in citations? Despite these and other criticisms, "sometimes not following the Style Manual can identify a lawyer as a notice who doesn't know his way around an appellate court. Not the best way to make a good impression."Want more Beds? Of course you do! So now read his September 2018 OCBA Lawyer column, Rights and Wrongs. It's hilarious!
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