Texas Appellate Law Blog : Texas Appellate Lawyer & Attorney : Smith Law Group, P.C. : Appeals, Sanctions, Summary Judgment : Austin, Texas

Below are the slides from my talk on standards of review at the 25th Annual Advanced Civil Appellate Practice Course.  This is an important but incredibly dense topic, and I only had 30 minutes to present it.  I therefore focused on two things:  (1) the abuse-of-discretion standard, which defies precise definition; and (2) legal sufficiency of the evidence after City of Keller v. Wilson, 168 S.W.3d 802 (Tex. 2005).

The slides provide some flavor, but my basic point on City of Keller was that appellate lawyers and courts are still trying to sort out what it means six years later.  I wasn't alone in that view.  The case was mentioned repeatedly during the seminar and was even described as the most important Texas Supreme Court decision from the past decade.

For fun, I'm also including @TexasBarCLE's tweets during my talk.  It's true that, in a hotel ballroom packed with appellate lawyers, only one raised his hand.

Thanks to Brandy Wingate for letting me build on her work product in putting this presentation together.

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Here is the second video from the "ethics intervention" presentation at the Advanced Appellate Seminar recently put on by the State Bar Appellate Section and TexasBarCLE,  Houston appellate lawyer David Holman once again demonstrates some things counsel should not do, this time in the context of preparing and filing a motion for rehearing in the court of appeals.  Russell Hollenbeck plays Holman's client.

The quotes from real-life motions for rehearing are priceless.  They bring back memories of the famous motion for rehearing in which a lawyer labeled the Texas Supreme Court one of the "Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse" and called the justices "nine nutty professors."  The lesson?  Writing a "catharsis motion" might make you feel better, but filing one is usually a mistake.

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I recently promised a little humor, so here you go.

In this video, produced for the Advanced Appellate Seminar put on last week by the State Bar Appellate Section and TexasBarCLE, Houston appellate lawyer David Holman demonstrates a number of things counsel should not do during oral argument.  The video was part of an "ethics intervention" in which Holman's colleagues Russell Hollenbeck and Daryl Moore expressed concern about Holman's "ethical lapses."  Richard Hogan appears as Holman's opposing counsel in the video, which also features real-life Justices Martha Hill Jamison, Terry Jennings, and Sharon McCally.

Having this kind of material in a statewide CLE program shows why practicing appellate law in Texas is so special.

Within the next few days, I'll post a similar video addressing motions for rehearing.

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As I wrote about here, the State Bar Appellate Section sponsored a Twitter brief contest in conjunction with the recent Advanced Civil Appellate Practice Course in Austin.  The winners were announced during the Section's annual meeting.

The official PowerPoint containing the winning entries and several honorable mentions is embedded below for everyone's enjoyment.

I intend to put up a couple more follow-up posts about the conference over the next few days. At least one of them will further demonstrate that appellate lawyers can have fun, too.

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