CLE

For “Bridging the Gap” participants

This morning I gave a one-hour presentation on appellate practice at the Louisiana State Bar Association’s semi-annual Bridging the Gap seminar for new and relatively new lawyers. The legal citations in my written materials had hyperlinks to the cases and statutes being cited, but the hyperlinks were stripped in the process of including the materials in the seminar manual. So for anyone interested in the hyperlinked version of my written materials, here’s a link to a downloadable PDF version with active hyperlinks.


“Bridging the Gap” bonus materials

This morning, I’m giving a CLE presentation on appellate practice at the Louisiana State Bar Association’s Bridging the Gap seminar. For attendees and anyone else who’s interested, here are links to a couple of articles I came across recently that make for good reading. The authors’ names are links to their bios, and the article titles are links to the articles themselves.


Bridging the Gap — Spring 2024 Edition

On May 8, I’ll be giving my spiel on appellate practice at the Louisiana State Bar Association’s semi-annual Bridging the Gap seminar. This seminar, designed for new lawyers, will be held on May 7–8 at the Marriott Warehouse / Arts District Hotel, 859 Convention Center Boulevard in New Orleans. It offers 15 hours of CLE, including ethics, professionalism, and law-office management. If you’re a new or relatively new lawyer, please consider registering. If you know a new or relatively new lawyer, please recommend this seminar to her or him. To view the program, follow this link. To see more information and to register, follow this link. Thanks.


What’s the best lure?

Conventional thought is that the best CLE presenters are judges, because judges are the people that advocates are trying to persuade. An often-cited authority for this thought is a 1940 essay by John W. Davis, making an analogy between persuasion and fishing:

[A] discourse on the argument of an appeal would come with superior force from a judge who is in his judicial person the target and the trier of the argument .... [S]uppose fishes had the gift of speech, who would listen to a fisherman's weary discourse on fly-casting, the shape and color of the fly, the size of the tackle, the length of the line, the merit of different rod makers and all the other tiresome stuff that fishermen talk about, if the fish himself could be induced to give his view on the most effective methods of approach. For after all it is the fish that the angler is after and all his recondite learning is but the hopeful means to that end.

John W. Davis, “The Argument of an Appeal" (1940), in Classic Essays on Legal Advocacy 212, 212 (George Rossman ed., 2010); and in 3 J. of App. Prac. & Process 745, 745 (Fall 2001).

Certainly judges’ insights are valuable. I always enjoy their presentations at CLE events, and I always learn something from them. A few times, I’ve been on CLE panels with judges and thorougly enjoyed working with them. My list of recommended books on this blog’s home page includes four by judges.

Having said that, I think there’s a built-in limit to what we can learn from the people we want to persuade. The limit is this: Unless those people are extremely self-aware, they will know, and therefore be able to talk about, only what works on a conscious level. They probably won’t know what persuades them on a subconscious level. And the stuff that works on a subconscious level is highly effective.

So by all means, listen to judges at CLE events. Read their books on effective advocacy. Practice what they teach. It will likely improve your advoccy.

But don’t stop there. Learn what works subconsciously to persuade people (including judges). Educate yourself on ancient rhetoric (it still works), cognitive psychology, and any other discipline telling us how people think and make decisions.

Remember that best lure is the one that the fish doesn’t recognize as a lure.


For your last-minute appellate CLE needs

If you haven’t yet met your CLE quota and are looking for appellate CLE, check out these upcoming offerings:

For appellate specialists and those intending to apply for appellate specialization in 2024, both seminars qualify for appellate-specialization CLE credit.


Appellate CLE opportunities in 2023

If you’re looking for appellate CLE opportunities, two are coming up in November, and another comes up soon in early October.

On November 8, the Louisiana State Bar Association is holding its Advanced Appellate Practice seminar in New Orleans at the Hilton Riverside. The program offers 6.25 hours of CLE. Appellate-practice specialization CLE credit is pending, but all past versions of this seminar have qualified for that, and I see no reason why this one wouldn’t. To review the program or to register online, follow this link.

If you want to combine your CLE with a trip to our nation’s capital, then check out the ABA’s Appellate Judges Education Institute 2023 Summit, to be held in Washington, DC on November 2–5. This is a bench–bar event, with many appellate judges from across the nation attending as registrants. So if you attend, you may (as happened to a former colleague) find yourself sharing a cab or dinner table with a future U.S. Supreme Court justice. According to the event’s CLE/CJE page, the organizers are applying for accreditation in Louisiana. For appellate-practice specialization CLE credit, you may have to submit individually to the La. Board of Legal Specialization for committee approval. To view the speaker lineup and session topics, follow this link. For registration, follow this link.

Finally, if you don’t want to wait until November to get your appellate CLE, check out the annual Fifth Circuit Appellate Advocacy Seminar, to be held in New Orleans on October 2–3. This is always a worthwhile seminar (meaning you’ll actually learn useful stuff). For Louisiana lawyers, it offers ten hours of CLE, including one hour each of ethics and professionalism. And it’s typically approved for appellate-specialization CLE credit. To view the program and register online, follow this link.


My presentation today at the LSBA’s “Bridging the Gap” seminar

Today I’m giving a one-hour presentation on appellate practice at the Louisiana State Bar Association’s Bridging the Gap seminar for newly sworn-in lawyers (mostly those who took the July 2022 bar exam). For anyone who’s interested, here are links to my written materials and my slide show. The written materials are substantially revised, not only to update them but also to reorganize them for easier reading. I hope they’re helpful.


5th Cir. Appellate Advocacy Seminar

If you’re looking for appellate CLE in Louisiana, the Bar Association of the Fifth Federal Circuit is offering 10 hours of it, including professionalism and ethics. The BAFFC’s annual Appellate Advocacy Seminar is scheduled for October 3–4 at the Pan Am Center in New Orleans (601 Poydras Street). The first day will be heavy on writing: a two-hour writing workshop in the morning on storytelling, and a one-hour presentation in the afternoon by Tenth Circuit Judge Robert Bacharach. (If you have Judge Bacharach’s recent book, Legal Writing: A Judge’s Perspective on the Science and Rhetoric of the Written Word, maybe he’ll autograph it for you.) The second day looks good to: it includes an opportunity in the morning to watch oral arguments at the Fifth Circuit, and an afternoon panel discussion with three Fifth Circuit judges. For more information about the seminar or to register online, follow this link.


More free CLE stuff

A couple of days ago, I gave my semi-annual presentation on appellate practice at the Louisiana State Bar Association’s Bridging the Gap seminar for new lawyers. My written materials (PDF copy here) include nuts-and-bolts stuff for handling appeals and writ applications in the Louisiana appellate courts. My slide presentation (PDF copy here) show five principles that I’ve come up with for succeeding in appellate practice, some of which can be transferred to other areas of legal practice. I’m making them available here for anyone who’s interested.


Free CLE stuff

I just finished giving a presentation for the Louisiana State Bar Association’s Jazz Fest seminar. The seminar theme was powerful writing. My presentation focused on use of grammatical structures to either focus or deflect attention on someone or something. For anyone interested in that sort of thing (and who isn’t?), here are links to my written materials and slide presentation.