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Appellate Practice Committee

Mission

The Appellate Practice Committee strives to demystify the appellate process through its programs and the work of its subcommittees. Committee members monitor current developments in case law, proposed amendments to procedural rules, and proposals for legislation. Subcommittees also work on appellate institutes, the National Law Student Appellate Advocacy contest, program planning, and numerous special assignments.

 

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Announcements

Seeking Contributors

The Appellate Practice Committee is seeking authors to write for its website. Please contact an editor for more information.

Message from the Chairs

The Appellate Practice Committee is a preeminent professional organization for appellate advocates. The committee strives to provide excellent substantive information and networking opportunities. The focus in 2012 is proceeding with implementation of new initiatives identified last year, including leveraging our new digital newsletter, adding to our professional networking sites, developing Sound Advice segments for the website, and organizing our second biannual regional CLE program. But we are also excited about the upcoming ABA Annual Meeting.

The CLE programs at the ABA Annual Meeting will be August 2–4, 2012, in Chicago. We will have our traditional committee dinner as well as a formal committee networking event. And we have two great CLE programs that you will not want to miss—a U.S. Supreme Court end-of-term-review program with Ken Starr and Professor Pam Karlan on Friday morning August 3 and a program on lessons learned from the movies on trial and appellate advocacy scheduled for Friday afternoon. For the movies program, along with featuring several federal judges, we will have a practitioner panelist who currently is film distributor, a jury consultant who is an actor, and a moderator who is a movie buff. This dynamic panel should make for a fun and lively event. We hope to see you there!

Starting last fall, committee members began receiving the Appellate Practice newsletter digitally; copies are available here on our website as well. The new format makes the great content the newsletter has always been known for far more widely available. The committee also provides listserv announcements to announce events or important opinions or statutory changes. The Rules and Statutes Subcommittee continues its leadership in this area, producing bimonthly substantive listserv messages. If you are interested in authoring an article or preparing a listserv note, please let us or the web or newsletter editors know.

We are excited that our LinkedIn and Facebook pages have really started growing. Each provides an avenue for discussion and networking. Check out the LinkedIn page for interesting discussions underway or start your own! Either way, please join either or both sites to become part of our committee networking. You can click on the icons on this page to sign up.

Another of our initiatives that is starting to expand is our Sound Advice segments library. We have several segments in process. These segments are easy-to-record, short audios on topics of interest to fellow appellate lawyers. The Sound Advice audios are linked to this page as well as other Section of Litigation pages. Please contact the Subcommittee Chair, Ted Hirt, if you are interested in recording one of these segments.

We are also in the process of identifying the site for our second regional CLE program to be held in 2013. Last year’s program presented at Duke Law School was very well received. It is a great opportunity to reach local bar members that might not otherwise attend our national meetings. If you have ideas for topics at the regional CLE or the Sections Annual Conference, please contact our Programming Subcommittee chairs.

All this along with our usual committee work! These ongoing efforts include increasing membership, providing input on new appellate rules and statutes of interest, increasing connections with local and state bar associations dealing with appellate issues, and developing a pro bono program to give members a chance to undertake appeals for those in real need. We invite all of you to pick a subcommittee and get involved. And invite your friends and colleagues to give us a try. They’ll be glad they did.

We look forward to working with you on all of these initiatives and seeing you next at the ABA Annual Meeting in August.

Tom Donlon
Karen Precella
Joseph A. Greenaway, Third Circuit
Cochairs, Appellate Practice Committee

Subcommittees

 

Spotlight on Subcommittees

Appellate Rules and Statues Subcommittee
This subcommittee focuses on reviewing amendments or changes to existing federal and state appellate rules and statutes as well as new federal and state appellate rules and statutes analyzing those developments for our committee members and, more generally, for the legal community. The subcommittee issues a monthly listserv to the entire Appellate Practice Committee on issues related to appellate rules and submits scholarly articles to the Appellate Practice Journal for publication.

More Subcommittee Descriptions