Appeals and Effective Appellate Advocacy

This course discusses appeals and how to be an effective appellate advocate. The course is designed for lawyers who have litigated primarily in trial courts, rather than focusing on appeals.

Advocacy before the appeals court differs from advocacy before the trial court because it requires seeing the world through the eyes of the appellate judge. As former Chief Judge Michel of the Federal Circuit has written, “An appeals court mainly corrects repeatable legal error, not individual mistaken results.” This process requires consideration of the standard of review and the body of information in the appeal record more than how the witnesses testified and what the individual documents say.