Today's DJ has Wilmer's Thomas Sprankling's The appeal of putting an appellate lawyer on a trial team:
- an appellate attorney can add significant value to a case long before it is time to appeal and, potentially, head off the need for an appeal at all.
- Perhaps the most natural place for an appellate lawyer to slot into a trial team is when it comes time to brief dispositive motions
- an appellate lawyer can play an active role even if he or she joins the team in the middle of the case – for example, by leading the non-dispositive briefing and assisting with some of the tough strategy calls that arise in any litigation.
- it is becoming increasingly common for appellate attorneys to embed themselves in a trial team just weeks or months before the trial begins. An appellate attorney can play an important role in three ways: preservation, perspective, and presentation of the law.
- First, an appellate attorney can keep a close eye on the key legal issues during trial, making sure they are appropriately preserved for appellate review.
- Second, because an appellate lawyer is used to appearing before judges rather than juries, an appellate specialist can provide a real-time perspective into what arguments and decisions are more likely to catch the eye of the court of appeal.
- Third, an appellate attorney will feel at home in drafting the jury instructions, which – like dispositive motions – provide another opportunity to shape the purely legal questions that will be in front of an appellate court.
Abandonment of an appeal v. Dismissal of an appeal -- It makes a big difference, as seen in this unpub from 1/5 today.
"While the mistake may seem like a technicality, the courts rely on parties to file the correct forms in the correct courts, according to the rules."
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