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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

ABA Annual Meeting

The Annual Meeting will be held in San Francisco this year August 8–13, 2013. Registration is now open. The committee will have some special activities, more details on which will appear here soon.

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

Welcome to the Appellate Practice Committee’s webpage. The committee strives to provide excellent substantive information and networking opportunities to all our members. We continue to deliver valuable content and updates to our members. All our subcommittees have been busy developing listservs, newsletters, Sound Advice, and other information.

Spring 2013 has been a busy and productive time for the committee. In April, the committee participated in the Section of Litigation Annual Conference in Chicago. Our sponsored CLE program entitled “The Seventh Circuit: A Tradition of Legal Innovation and Excellence,” was held on Thursday, April 25. The program, focused on practice before the Chicago-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, involved an informative and lively discussion by a panel including Judges Diane Wood and Ilana Rovner from the Seventh Circuit. On Friday, April 26, the committee tried something new, combining our business meeting with a substantive CLE program on appellate ethics. The program consisted of four hypothetical scenarios presented live by committee members portraying an associate and a partner, followed by comments from our cochairs Judge Joseph Greenaway of the Third Circuit and Sonia O’Donnell. The presentation was well received and elicited an interesting exchange with the audience. We plan to prepare a summary for publication in the newsletter for those who could not get to Chicago, and will look at doing another business meeting program at future SACs.

In May, the committee presented its first Roundtable conference call. Our speaker was former Chief Justice Clifford Taylor of the Michigan Supreme Court, who talked about amicus briefs. Paul Hudson, the cochair of the Young Lawyers Subcommittee (which took the lead on this project) acted as moderator. To those who had a chance to listen in, the discussion had a warm, informal feel—like two colleagues talking over coffee— rather than a panel with each participant reciting their set speech. Yet, the program was also interactive, with committee members emailing questions to the moderator. Overall, the program was a great success and we had a good number of committee members participating.

Our subcommittees continue to work hard on various projects. In addition to the Programming Subcommittee’s work on SAC and the Young Lawyers work on Committee Expo and Roundtable, we had a big outreach effort by Membership. To keep us informed and up-to-date, our Social Media Subcommittee continues to post conversations and announcements. Our Pro Bono Subcommittee has almost completed its work on collecting information regarding opportunities at each of the Federal Courts of Appeal. They will next focus on the best way to disseminate the information for use by committee members. The Sound Advice subcommittee continues to add to our library with new recordings posted regularly. Later in June the Spring issue of our newsletter will arrive your email inbox. We would like to thank all our subcommittees and members for all their hard work this year.

For the summer, our big event is the 2013 ABA Annual Meeting is to be held August 8–13 in San Francisco. We will have a committee meeting and our traditional Dutch Treat Dinner. Details will be sent to you as we get closer to the date. We urge everyone to think about attending this great ABA event, particularly our members from the West Coast who might have had difficulty traveling to SAC.

We strongly encourage your participation in all the committee’s activities and particularly our subcommittees, so join one now if you have not already. Next, it is on to San Francisco.

Tom Donlon
Sonia Escobio O'Donnell
The Honorable Joseph A. Greenaway, Third Circuit
Cochairs, Appellate Practice Committee

Subcommittees

 

Spotlight on Subcommittees

Professional and Social Networking Subcommittee

This subcommittee provides information to our members about appellate issues and directs members to discussions, postings, and articles on our website. The committee is active in both Facebook and Linkedin and there have been some interesting discussions in our social-media sites regarding topics of interest to appellate lawyers. Please “like” our committee on Facebook and join our Linkedin group. Joining social media is a great way to network and share information with other appellate lawyers.

More Subcommittee Descriptions