A legal career can span many decades and different types of practices. In this episode, a long-time appellate attorney, Kevin Dubose of Alexander Dubose & Jefferson, joins Todd Smith and Jody Sanders to discuss not only his experiences throughout his appellate law career, but also his life as a trial lawyer before switching to
Error preservation often determines what issues an appellate court can hear. Too often, clients, trial counsel, and even appellate counsel learn that error didn’t get preserved when it’s already too late to fix. To explore more about error preservation, Todd Smith and Jody Sanders talk with Steve Hayes, the error-preservation guru. Chances are, if
Statistically speaking, any appellant faces an uphill battle with less than a 50% chance of success. But, with those odds, why should a client ever appeal? Todd Smith and Jody Sanders answer this question, highlighting why appeals matter even when the odds might not point to success. The discussion focuses on how standards of review
Discretion isn’t just for trial courts. The intermediate courts of appeals are sometimes called upon to make decisions involving judicial discretion too. On today’s show, Todd Smith and Jody Sanders are joined by Michael Ritter, a staff attorney at the Fourth Court of Appeals in San Antonio, to talk about how the appellate courts
It seems everything can be done over the internet nowadays. With the global pandemic and quarantine protocols, more and more people have relied on the world wide web when working from home. But a major threat has hindered those trying to practice appellate law recently — ransomware. On today’s show, Todd Smith and Jody Sanders
Few judges have sat on a trial-court bench, a court of appeals, and the Texas Supreme Court. Our guest for this episode, Judge Jeff Brown, has done all three and more. Today, he joins Todd Smith and Jody Sanders to talk about his time as a state trial and appellate judge and his recent
Behind a well-functioning court system is an Office of Court Administration that ensures technology and processes are rightly placed. In this episode, Todd Smith and Jody Sanders interview the Administrative Director of the Texas Office of Court Administration, David Slayton, about how OCA supports Texas courts and helps streamline appellate practice. He shares
Appellate law is not exempt from the global technological pivot we are experiencing in these strange times. Lawyers all over the nation are adopting technology in a way that they haven’t been forced to up until now. Raffi Melkonian of Wright Close & Barger is the contemporary embodiment of the “lawyer of the future” in
Good appellate lawyers get real with their clients about their chances of success on appeal. Each case is different, and in practice, all appellate lawyers can really do is estimate. But what if their estimates are grounded on carefully collected and analyzed empirical data? Kent Rutter and the team at Haynes and Boone, LLP curate
While women still hold the minority of positions in law firms and still experience bias and discrimination in a world dominated by older, white men, voices of resistance are gradually on the rise, especially on social media. The handle #LadyLawyerDiaries is a perfect example of how this happens on Twitter, one of the biggest and