A Virginia Appellate Law Blog
I’m still trying to keep myself honest. For the second month in a row, we get swordfighting Lesbians (although they were way funnier in Gideon than Thucydides):
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The Supreme Court of Virginia’s argument schedule for next week is up. Here are a few of the cases that caught our eye and why:
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After revisiting the Tail End, I realized that there’s only one way to keep me honest about how I’m spending my limited reading time: transparency. So I’m going to start keeping a public list of what I’m reading. As an added benefit, every time I stumble across something good I can let you all know.
With that background, here’s last month’s list:…
Continue Reading What I’m Reading
Here’s an early Christmas present: my favorite blog post in the entire world. It’s an essay called “The Tail End” that Tim Urban wrote about five years ago. It’s so, so good.
In fact, you should really stop reading this and go read it, right now. Then come back.
Back yet?
I always hate it at CLEs when people say things like, “There’s no good writing. Only good editing.” Sure, a first draft is just that, and that you can’t compare your first cut at a brief with another writer’s finished product. 10-4. But how are you supposed to get from that first draft to the finished product? Like, mechanically, what are you supposed to do? In GTD parlance, what is the next physical, visible action?
For years, I didn’t know. So I would just print out my brief and read it, and edit, over and over again. How would I know that I was done? Either I would run out of time, or I would get to the point that I was reversing changes from an earlier iteration.
This was a deeply stupid approach. And it took forever.
I’ve gotten a little better at this over the years. Here’s how:…
Continue Reading I Am a Lousy Editor and So Can You!
Brother Emmert has an essay with some updated appellate statistics. I’ll let him do the talking:
Thus far in 2020, The Robes have given us 41 published opinions and seven published orders. We’ve also seen 25 unpublished orders – rulings that adjudicate the appeal but don’t appear in Virginia Reports and don’t carry precedential
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Just before Thanksgiving, the Supreme Court of Virginia issued a new opinion dealing with the voluntary-payment doctrine, Sheehy v. Williams. It’s worth reading for two reasons. First, the voluntary-payment doctrine trips up litigants and ends appeals. Second, Sheehy is just a well-researched and cleanly written opinion.
Continue Reading New SCOVA Case on the Voluntary-Payment Doctrine
Juli Porto has an article in this morning’s VTLAppeal, Is There a New Sheriff in Town Named “A.H. Tingler”?, analyzing SCOVA’s subtle importation of Twiqbal through A.H. v. Church of God in Christ, Inc. and Tingler v. Graystone Homes, Inc. Thoughtful and recommended. Among other things, Juli notes that the Court cited Twiqbal in A.H., then cited A.H. in Tingler as if it had always been Virginia law. She points out:
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Continue Reading A New Sheriff in Town?
Chief Justice Lemons likes to say that an advocate develops three oral arguments in each case: the one they planned to give, the one they actually gave, and the one they wish they’d given.
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Continue Reading Practical Legal Writing from the VTLA Annual Convention
As I’m writing this, I’m attending the VBA’s Appellate Summit, a fantastic CLE that comes around every three years. This year, the appellate council made asked me to moderate a 50-minute panel about brief writing. They won’t make that mistake again! Thankfully, the outstanding–dare I say heroic?–contributions of panelists Judge Robert Humphreys, Don Jeffrey, and Elbert Lin saved the session from disaster (nothing could save it from my dad jokes). It turns out that a panel that good can moderate itself.
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Continue Reading Live Blogging the VBA Appellate Summit