For “Bridging the Gap” participants
This afternoon Justice Harry Lemmon (La. Supreme Court, retired) and I are giving a one-hour CLE presentation to newly minted lawyers, as part of the Louisiana State Bar Association’s Bridging the Gap seminar. Below are links to supplemental materials for BTG participants and anyone else masochistic enough to be interested:
- PDF copy of the PowerPoint presentation.
- PDF copy of written materials (same as in the seminar book).
- The Importance of Earnest Oral Argument. This article summarizes some research I did in 1999 into how often oral argument determines the outcome of an appeal (or how seldom, depending on your point of view).
- A Writ in Time. This article, written three years ago, explains how to figure out your deadline to apply to a court of appeal for a supervisory writ. Note that La. Code of Civ. P. art. 1914 has been amended since this article was written, but most of what’s in this article is still good law.
- In Praise of Moot Court — Not! In this article, Chief Judge Alex Kozinski (9th Cir.) explains the differences between law-school moot-court competition and real-life appellate practice.
- How to Write an Appellate Brief. How do you turn a multi-volume record into a 14,000-words-or-less brief? This article shows one way to do it.
Some of you may be looking for appellate-practice forms. While I recommend against over-reliance on forms (see here and here), I have a few documents that you might find useful; just click here and scroll down a bit. If you use them, please check the rules to make sure they still comply. (Note that I uploaded these documents last year, so they could very well be out of date.) And if you’re going to create a form file, please follow this advice and put an expiration date on each form. I recommend a maximum shelf life of one year.
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