Creative and Effective Appellate Brief Writing

Providing meaningful appellate and post-conviction representation involves more than reading the appellate record, speaking with your client, and perfecting a brief. This two-day brief writing training provides deep insight into how to persuasively convey your clients’ stories of injustice. It features a session on combatting and litigating racial inequities in your cases, which is presented by a nationally recognized criminal justice reform expert who has successfully litigated in the United States Supreme Court a challenge to the introduction of explicitly racially biased evidence. You also learn how to develop a theory of your case through brainstorming and working collaboratively and how to use that theory to craft powerful introductions, statements of facts, and arguments, thanks to highly regarded institutional office practitioners. Finally, you hear from an award-winning author and journalist about his own powerful experience in telling the story of a wrongful conviction. Additionally, the small group sessions allow criminal and Family Court defense practitioners providing mandated representation to work collaboratively and in person to apply the skills learned in the plenary sessions to their own cases. These small group sessions are guided by appellate and post-conviction practitioners from across New York State.

Speakers

Hon. Elizabeth A. Garry, Presiding Justice, State of New York Supreme Court, Appellate Division, Third Judicial Department

Christina Swarns, Executive Director of the Innocence Project (Litigating Racial Injustice)

Timothy Murphy, Assistant Federal Public Defender for the Western District of New York (Brief Writing—the Components and Editing)

Richard Firstman, Author of A Criminal Injustice and The Death of Innocents (Storytelling and Persuasive Writing)

Felice Milani, Bureau Chief, Appeals Bureau, Legal Aid Society of Suffolk County (Storytelling and Persuasive Writing)

James Hobbs, Assistant Public Defender, Monroe County Public Defender’s Office (Brainstorming and Developing a Theory of Appeal)