This is the fourth post in the Flipping the Script series, drawn from Episode 162 of the Texas Appellate Law Podcast. The series examines what Texas appellate courts could do to make appellate practice better.

If you practice appellate law in Texas, you file motions for extension of time. A lot of them. You do this not because you’re lazy or disorganized, but because the current briefing deadlines don’t reflect how the work is done. Extensions aren’t the exception; they’re the rule.

I’ll own my share of that. Extensions have been a regular part of my practice for as long as I can remember. As a sole practitioner under the current scheme, I don’t expect that to change.

That extension motions have become routine across the board—not just for solos, but for practitioners at every level—is a signal worth noting. Every motion a lawyer files costs time to prepare. Every motion a court receives costs time to process. When that volume is high enough that the motions are expected, the underlying deadlines deserve a closer look.

Three problems are worth naming here, along with some ideas for how to address them.

The Initial Deadlines Are Too Short

The standard deadline for an appellant’s opening brief is 30 days after the record is filed. The deadline for a reply brief is 20 days after the appellee’s brief. On paper, those numbers might seem workable. In practice, they often aren’t.

Consider what 30 days actually means for a lawyer who is new to the case. You don’t control when the record is complete. You haven’t seen the opposing arguments framed for an appellate audience. You don’t yet know which rulings will matter most on appeal or how the appellee will frame the record. You’re not just writing—you’re analyzing for the first time.

Layer on top of that the reality of a busy appellate practice: overlapping briefing deadlines, trial support commitments, and cases at multiple stages simultaneously. There have been stretches in my own practice when I’ve had multiple complex briefs in progress at once, and completing all of them within initial deadlines—at the quality level the client and court deserved—simply wasn’t possible.

The reply brief deadline is, if anything, tighter in the ways that matter most. A reply is a direct response to an opposing brief that may approach word count limits and raise arguments you’re seeing for the first time. Twenty days is not generous.

Lengthening the initial deadlines—thoughtfully, not indefinitely—would reduce the volume of first-extension motions filed before the briefing process has gotten underway and should cut down on the number of subsequent extension requests. That benefits everyone.

Extension Practice Varies Across Courts

As more appellate lawyers practice statewide, inconsistency in how courts handle extension motions has become harder to ignore. Most courts grant first extensions automatically, but the experience diverges from there. Some courts remain accommodating throughout the briefing process. Others have tightened up, and you may not know which kind of court you’re in until you’re already in it.

I’ve had an unopposed motion to extend the reply brief deadline denied outright. More recently, a court granted an extension but shortened the period I had requested—with the revised deadline falling two days before a scheduled oral argument, a date I had noted in the motion. I moved for reconsideration, and the court ultimately granted me the time I originally sought. Without that separation, I was facing a compressed timeline that would have made preparing the brief and for argument exceedingly difficult.

These aren’t complaints about any particular court. Courts have discretion over their dockets, and that discretion exists for good reason. I recognize that practitioners who lean too much on extensions have contributed to some courts’ perception that extensions shouldn’t be so freely given.

But when lawyers practicing statewide encounter meaningfully different standards depending on which courthouse the case is in, the inconsistency creates its own inefficiencies. A more uniform baseline approach to extension practice—particularly for subsequent motions—would serve both practitioners and the courts they appear in.

Accelerated Appeals Aren’t Really Accelerated Anymore

This one is common knowledge among appellate practitioners. The volume of accelerated appeals has grown substantially over the years. The practical consequence is that the distinction between accelerated and non-accelerated has largely disappeared. The only visible difference between the two is the initial deadline, which is shorter without any corresponding reduction in the complexity or scope of the work required.

An appeal is accelerated because the legislature or a rule has designated the type of appeal as time-sensitive. That policy rationale made sense when the types of orders subject to interlocutory appeal were limited. As the category has expanded, the courts have absorbed more accelerated appeals without a corresponding increase in resources. The result is a label that creates tighter deadlines for practitioners without any measurable hope for speedier resolution.

The current framework deserves a hard look—both the initial briefing deadlines and the procedural steps for perfecting the appeal. The label has outlived its rationale. The deadlines should follow.

What a Better System Could Look Like

My co-host Jody Sanders raised an idea in Episode 162 that I think deserves serious attention: a leveled briefing framework, modeled loosely on the discovery levels used in Texas civil cases.

A Level 1 case—a single-issue summary judgment appeal with a discrete record—gets a tighter initial deadline. A Level 2 case—a standard multi-issue appeal—gets the current base deadline or something modestly longer. A Level 3 case—a cross-appeal, a complex record, a case with multiple parties—gets a longer initial deadline from the outset.

The framework matches deadlines to the work rather than treating every non-accelerated appeal identically. It could also reduce the volume of extensions at every level, because the starting point would be more realistic in the first place.

In Episode 159, Justice David Gunn floated a related idea: a status conference early in the appeal, shortly after the record is filed, where the parties and the court could discuss the scope of the case and set an appropriate briefing schedule. That kind of early check-in could serve as the mechanism for assigning the right level and calibrating expectations before the briefing clock starts running.

Neither idea requires a dramatic overhaul of the rules. But both would require acknowledging that the current framework no longer fits the real timelines for how appeals get done. This post is a modest attempt to start that conversation.

Flipping the Script Series