What are the most difficult aspects of appellate law?
There (are) really two aspects in appellate practice. There are my own matters, where I’m the lawyer who handled it at the trial court level and also I work on it when it goes up into appeal. It’s a different dynamic than some of the other matters I handle, where I come in after the trial court level is over and only handle the appeal. What’s the hardest part, sometimes, of appellate litigation, only ends up happening in that second (scenario). There’s a level of diplomacy that’s involved in coming in and having to work through what has happened before and try to change an outcome and question and revisit decisions that were made. Sometimes it’s … difficult, (not only) in addition to trying to overcome a bad result below for the client, but also trying to handle the diplomacy of either working with, or sometimes just completely taking over, for lawyers who may have spent years of their lives preparing a case. To have to look to somebody who’s coming at it just from the level of appeal
