Louisiana Civil Appeals

A little blog maintenance

The new web address for the Louisiana Second Circuit got me thinking that this blog’s home page should include links to the appellate courts. So I’ve added that feature to the sidebar on the right side of the screen. In addition to the Louisiana appellate courts, I’ve also included links to the U.S. Fifth Circuit and U.S. Supreme Court. So you don’t need to bookmark those courts in your own browser; just bookmark this blog and come back whenever you need to visit one of those web sites.

New URL for La. 2nd Circuit

If you’re looking for the Louisiana Second Circuit’s web site, you won’t find it at http://www.lacoa2.org/ anymore. Their new URL is http://www.la2nd.org/.

Changes to the U.S. Fifth Circuit’s briefing rules

On December 1, two changes kick in for writing U.S. Fifth Circuit briefs:

1. The statement of the case will no longer be separate from the statement of facts. Instead, you’ll have one statement of the case, which will include both the relevant procedural history and the relevant facts.
2. The format for citing the record will be as follows: For cases with a single record, ROA.[page number]. For cases with multiple records: ROA.[case number].[page number].

You can read the court’s notice of the amendments by clicking here.

The reason for the latter amendment is to facilitate hyperlinking the record citations to a specific page in the electronic record. The in-house tech wizards at the Fifth Circuit have written a program that scans the PDF version of your brief and converts the record citations into hyperlinks. For the program to work, record citations must follow a uniform format. Click here to read my prior post on this topic.

For lovers of parentheticals, two articles

Want some tips on how to use parentheticals in your briefs? Check out this post on my legal-writing blog.

Quotation of the day: On the danger of raising too many issues

“When a party comes to us with nine grounds for reversing the district court, that usually means there are none.” Fifth Third Mortgage Co. v. Chicago Title Ins. Co., 692 F.3d 507, 509 (6th Cir. 2012).

Who should handle oral argument?

In digging through some back issues of Litigation, I came across Who Should Do the Oral Argument?, by Robert A. Mittelstaedt and Brian J. Murray of Jones Day. Their point: this question does not have a one-size-fits-all answer. Depending on the situation, the best choice might be the trial lawyer or the appellate specialist; or the senior partner or the associate who did the leg work.

Brief Right: A blog worth following.

Here is a worthwhile blog on brief-writing that I just discovered: Brief Right, by Kirby Griffis. Topics include any aspect of writing or editing briefs. If you haven’t done so already, check it out.

(Cross-posted on The (New) Legal Writer.)