For those of you wondering, yes, this is a resumption of a series of posts I wrote years ago on reluctance to engage appellate counsel. (You can read the whole series here.) I was reviewing that series this morning to develop some marketing ideas, and saw some ideas I want to develop further. My earlier posts cited many reasons that attorneys might not involve appellate counsel, but never really expanded on some of the reasons that clients might not do so. I listed such reasons early in the series, which I repeat here: “I can’t afford an appeal.” “An appellate lawyer will just try to talk me out of making…
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Why Some Lawyers and Their Clients are Reluctant to Engage Appellate Counsel, Part 4: “This Case Needs a Specialist.”
(NOTE: This post is the fourth in a series. To read the announcement of the series and/or leave your ideas for subsequent installments, click here.) Today’s post looks at another ability-related reason the trial lawyer decides to handle the appeal. He — and in this case, I’m referring to a trial lawyer that specializes in some substantive area of the law — thinks to himself: “This case needs a specialist.” The trial lawyer who says that rarely means an appellate specialist. Instead, the ace employment lawyer (to use just one example) thinks, “This employment case needs an employment lawyer like me on appeal, I can’t pass it off to an…
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Why Some Lawyers and Their Clients are Reluctant to Engage Appellate Counsel, Part 3: “No one knows the case better than I do.”
(NOTE: This post is the third in a series. To read the announcement of the series and/or leave your ideas for subsequent installments, click here.) Today’s post looks at another ability-related reason the trial lawyer decides to handle the appeal. He thinks to himself: “No one knows the case better than I do.” Who could argue with that? The trial lawyer may have spent hundreds or thousands of hours on the case over several years. Met every witness personally and attended every deposition. Pored through every discovery response, every document, every exhibit and every transcript. Several times. And yet . . . I still think it unwise, in most circumstances,…
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Why Some Lawyers and Their Clients are Reluctant to Engage Appellate Counsel, Part 2: “It’s Just Litigation.”
(NOTE: This post is the second in a series. To read the announcement of the series and/or leave your ideas for subsequent installments, click here.) In my first post in this series, I broke down lawyers’ reasons for not engaging appellate counsel into two broad categories: those related to ability and those related to economics. Today, we will examine a reason related to ability: “It’s just litigation”, or “Hey, I’m a litigator, and appeals are litigation, so I can do it.“ Are appeals litigation? Well, let’s see. Adverse parties? Check. Legal and/or factual disputes? Check. Courtroom and judges? Check. Judgments? Check. Yeah, I’d say that appeals are litigation. That said,…
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Why Some Lawyers and Their Clients are Reluctant to Engage Appellate Counsel, Part 1: Categories
(NOTE: This post is the first in a series. To read the announcement of the series and/or leave your ideas for subsequent installments, click here.) Well, it’s been four weeks since I promised a series of posts on this topic. You were probably about to give up on me. I started the first post, and it kept growing, and growing, and growing . . . clearly, some better way of organizing the topics was necessary. And I’ve devoted substantial time to it. How did I get to this point? I started writing about what I figure is the number one reason lawyers don’t engage appellate counsel. The trial lawyer thinks…
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Why Are Some Lawyers and Their Clients Reluctant to Engage Appellate Counsel?
UPDATE: This post is included in Blawg Review #174 at Texas Appellate Law Blog. Why don’t some trial lawyers or their clients engage appellate counsel when it comes time for the appeal? Over the years, I’ve heard various reasons advanced for this. Among them: lawyers see no need to hire new counsel for something they can do themselves, lawyers are afraid to lose the client forever to the appellate lawyer or his firm, lawyers and their clients are afraid that the appellate lawyer won’t know enough about the specialized area of law involved in the appeal, clients are too comfortable with the trial lawyer to switch, clients are fed up…