“I thought I knew what it was like to be a trial judge. And the truth is, I didn’t,” says Justice Scott Field of the Fifteenth Court of Appeals, back for his second visit to the show after first joining for Episode 6 in 2020. After leaving private practice to serve as the inaugural judge
“In a lot of respects, the legal system is a moral ordering system,” says Jody Sanders—one built on competing interests and an outcomes-based way of measuring success that, he argues, rarely tells the whole story. In this episode, Jody and Todd Smith explore a concept most lawyers have felt but never had a word
An attorney-fee award can sometimes dwarf the underlying recovery—yet, as Amy Prueger says, a party’s fee request is often an afterthought. Hosts Todd Smith and Jody Sanders talk with Amy, a litigation attorney at Clark Hill PLC in Austin, about her recent paper “Taming the Fee Dragon: Attorney’s Fees Recovery” and her ongoing
In this episode, hosts Todd Smith and Jody Sanders offer a mid-year check-in on the Texas Supreme Court’s new petition-for-review rules. Building on Todd’s Appellate Advocate article, A New Era in Texas Supreme Court Practice: Breaking Down the New Petition-for-Review Rules, they cover what changed between the preliminary and final rules, why the new
The full Texas Appellate Law Podcast catalog is live on YouTube: 171 full episodes, going back to March 2020.
Our first few episodes came together as the world was shutting down and courts were going remote. Jody Sanders and I sat down with no clear audience in mind and no real plan beyond the
“Give yourself time, give yourself options.” That refrain runs through this conversation as hosts Jody Sanders and Todd Smith break down what has changed in Texas supersedeas, the procedure for suspending a judgment during appeal. Drawing on Jody’s Appellate Advocate article, “The Name’s Bonds, Supersedeas Bonds,” they cover the four ways to supersede a Texas
The real AI risk isn’t hallucinations—it’s not using AI at all. That’s the counterintuitive argument from Ross Guberman, founder and CEO of BriefCatch, who tells hosts Todd Smith and Jody Sanders that lawyers ignoring AI may be approaching malpractice territory. BriefCatch now contains roughly 16,000 editing rules, up from about 10,000 in 2021. Ross
This is the sixth and final 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.
The first five posts in this series each featured one suggested reform. This one is different. When my
Wallace Jefferson, former Chief Justice of the Texas Supreme Court and newly installed President of the American Law Institute (ALI), joins Jody Sanders and Todd Smith for a wide-ranging conversation on appellate practice, judicial leadership, and legacy. Chief Justice Jefferson, a partner at Alexander Dubose & Jefferson LLP, discusses ALI’s mission to modernize
This is the fifth 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.
Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 28.1 governs cross-appeals in federal court. It sets a clean four-brief structure: the appellant’s opening