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Briefly Writing is now listed on the ABA Journal Blawg Directory under the topic of Legal Research & Writing and under the topic of Appellate Practice. If your interested in a blog about writing appellate briefs and issues related to appellate practice, I believe Briefly Writing is worth your time. Sign up to be a follower and get an email whenever a new post is published. And remember to vote for Briefly Writing when the ABA Journal Blawg 100 voting begins.

Categories: Miscellaneous

Tagged: ABA Journal, American Bar Association, blog, Briefly Writing, Michael Skotnicki

Suggestions for Emphasizing Facts Without Using Emphasis.

Mike Skotnicki

Posted on June 25, 2012

In my last post I wrote about subtle ways to help lessen the impact of adverse facts when writing an appeal brief. Just as you want to lessen the attention the reader gives to adverse facts, you want to increase the attention given to positive, helpful facts. As I posted on March 30th, don’t be one of those lawyers that takes the easy approach and overuses bold, underline, and italics emphasis in a brief or, heaven forbid, a combination of emphasis. While I still do believe in the use of emphasis, my years of experience has taught me that less is more effective. The use of emphasis on every page distracts the reader from the proper flow of the narrative argument and inevitably cheapens the effect…

Categories: Writing Techniques

Tagged: brief writing, brief writing techniques, Briefly Writing, Diagrams, Emphasis (typography), Michael Skotnicki

Suggestions for Lessening the Impact of Adverse Facts in Writing a Brief on Appeal.

Mike Skotnicki

Posted on June 19, 2012

No lawyer ever has a perfect case. Every dispute has two sides and no person or entity is perfect in everything they do. Thus, the facts of a case will always include some that are adverse to your client. This is likely especially true if your client was the loser in the trial court and you are now representing the client on appeal. This post will provide some suggestions on how to lessen the impact of adverse facts when writing an appellant’s brief and its Statement of Facts. One thing you can’t do as an appellate advocate is ignore the adverse facts in the record on appeal. From my five years of experience as a law clerk for the Chief Justice of the Alabama…

Categories: Writing Techniques

Tagged: adverse facts, appellate briefs, brief writing, brief writing techniques, Briefly Writing, Michael Skotnicki, Paragraph Length, passive voice, Sentence length, William Zinsser

American Bar Association Opinions Allow Firms to Earn Income from the Work Performed by a Freelance Attorney.

Mike Skotnicki

Posted on June 18, 2012

In the last decade, technology and globalization have changed our lives and how business is done. The practice of law has not been immune from these changes, as “outsourcing” by large law firms of document review to countries such India is no longer unusual and an alternative model for law firms has now evolved with the firm Clearspire in Washington, D.C. being staffed by lawyers working from “virtual offices” in the region. The concept of outsourcing has spread to legal research and brief writing, where smaller firms send overflow work or that needing an otherwise unavailable expertise to freelance attorneys in the United States who work from virtual offices unburdened by the high overhead costs of running a formal legal practice. The American Bar…

Categories: Miscellaneous

Tagged: ABA Opinion 00-420, ABA Opinion 08-451, American Bar Association, appealsandbriefs.com, freelance attorney, Michael Skotnicki

An Example of Storytelling in a Winning Appeal Brief.

Mike Skotnicki

Posted on June 11, 2012

In this post — part of a in a series on the technique of storytelling in an appellate brief by using stock stories as a framework for the narrative argument — I’m going to discuss an example of storytelling in a winning appeal brief I filed with the Alabama Supreme Court. The Alabama Supreme Court’s opinion in the case is published at Austin, et al. v. Alabama Check Cashers Ass’n, et al., 936 So.2d 1014 (Ala. 2005). I represented the Austins and other payday loan borrowers as intervenors in an action where the State Banking Dept. has been sued by and reached a consent agreement with the Alabama Check Cashers Association, which was actually a group of payday lenders seeking to evade application of Alabama’s usury law.…

Categories: Writing Techniques

Tagged: Alabama Supreme Court, appeal brief, brief writing techniques, Briefly Writing, Michael Skotnicki, payday loans, Small Loan Act, stock stories

Briefly Writing

Blogging about the process of writing appellate court briefs, appellate court rules, and appellate law.

Archive for

Briefly Writing is Now Listed on the ABA Journal Blawg Directory.

Mike Skotnicki

Posted on June 26, 2012

Suggestions for Emphasizing Facts Without Using Emphasis.

Mike Skotnicki

Posted on June 25, 2012

Suggestions for Lessening the Impact of Adverse Facts in Writing a Brief on Appeal.

Mike Skotnicki

Posted on June 19, 2012

American Bar Association Opinions Allow Firms to Earn Income from the Work Performed by a Freelance Attorney.

Mike Skotnicki

Posted on June 18, 2012

An Example of Storytelling in a Winning Appeal Brief.

Mike Skotnicki

Posted on June 11, 2012