Appellate Court Lawyer – Haddonfield, NJ Appeals Lawyer

Three Major Differences Between Trial and Appellate Lawyers

The Written Brief. Many trial lawyers don't focus enough on it, and they raise too many issues in it. Because your trial counsel was intimately involved in arguing your case below and may have lost several rulings they think they should have won, they tend to complain about too many of them on appeal, disregarding that most of these rulings had little impact on the outcome and are unlikely to warrant relief. The result: a scattershot brief that only obscures the one or two rulings that really mattered.

Our experience has taught us that appeals are usually won or lost on the brief, and that the best briefs raise only one or two issues that really impacted the case's outcome. We find these winning issues for our clients and highlight them in our briefs. And we don't obscure these issues by raising other trial rulings that the appellate court will likely disregard as harmless error.

The Record on Appeal. Many trial counsel tend to distort the facts on appeal. Frustrated because the judge or jury has rejected their version of events, these counsel continue making the same fact and credibility arguments on appeal, hoping the appellate court will agree with their side of the story. Unfortunately, these arguments usually don't persuade appellate judges because fact and credibility determinations are largely immune from appellate review. These arguments discourage appellate courts from ruling in your favor because they fail to present legal issues that the appellate court actually has the power to correct.

Because Hegge & Confusione wasn't involved in your case below, we can take a fresh look at it on appeal, viewing your case in a larger sense to construct winning arguments tailored for appellate judges, not juries. We focus on the major legal rulings in your case, such as erroneous jury instructions or the introduction of prejudicial evidence. And when we do challenge the lower court's factual findings, we do so properly, such as where they're not based on substantial, credible evidence in the record or are against the weight of the evidence.

Oral Argument. Having failed to articulate clear issues in their clients' briefs, many trial counsel try to compensate with rousing oral argument before the appellate court—another common mistake. Oral arguments are important, but they will not persuade busy, intellectually-focused appellate judges when the written brief hasn't even clarified the issues the court must decide, let alone suggested why the court should decide them in your favor.

We value the importance of oral argument on appeal, but we use it properly: to reinforce the issues we've already advanced in your brief and to answer questions the court may have in trying to decide the case. We've found that the best oral arguments are simply discussions with the court about why our clients should prevail.

********************

We invite you to contact us to learn more about how our approach to appellate litigation can help you.