The Trial Practice Tips Weblog

Appellate Advocacy: Views from a Clerk

Here's a great post about appellate advocacy from Milbarge at Begging the Question: Ten Don'ts For Appellate Advocates (From the Perspective of a Clerk). Be sure to bookmark the post so you can review it the next time you're polishing up an appellate brief.

Can a Website About Corporate Directors Be Both Entertaining and Informative?

If you work on cases in which you either sue or defend large corporations, you might have a use for an interesting web-based program that graphically maps the relationships between corporate directors.

The website is called They Rule. You can figure out how it works just by playing around at the website. Or for more information, look first at this post from Houston's Clear Thinkers, where I first read about They Rule.

Requests for Admissions: Use Certified Mail

When filing Requests for Admissions, send them to opposing counsel by certified mail.  It's the only way to deal with the first argument you'll hear when you try to get the requests deemed admitted for a failure to respond: "But I never received your Requests for Admissions!"

Even this may not be a good excuse, however.  In Glasco v. Marony, the Fifth District discussed what constitutes good cause for allowing an attorney to respond to Requests for Admissions out of time:

We find that the circuit court did not abuse its discretion by denying the plaintiff's request for an extension of time to respond to the defendants' request for admissions. Mistake, inadvertence, or simple attorney neglect cannot constitute the sole basis for a good cause determination. See Greene v. City of Chicago, 48 Ill. App. 3d 502, 513 (1976), aff'd, 73 Ill. 2d 100, 382 N.E.2d 1205 (1978); Floyd v. United States, 900 F.2d 1045, 1048 (7th Cir. 1990). We affirm the circuit court's judgment on this issue.

In Glasco, the court rejected the responding attorney's excuse that "he had been out of town and without a secretary at the time of service," and so should be excused for filing his responses late.

A Pause for Some Trial Humor

From Ken Lammers of CrimLaw: "How to Tell If You Have a Bad Lawyer."

Follow the link--it's funny!

Know Your Judge

The way you choose to argue your motion or present your case should be influenced, in part, by the personality of the presiding judge. Visit the courtroom ahead of time to learn about your judge's courtroom quirks. Before a trial, talk to the judge about how he or she handles motions in limine, jury selection, opening statements, and the like.

You should also be aware of the judge's biographical information and prior rulings. For federal judges, a good resource is the "Federal Judges Biographical Database." If you want to spend some money, there's also the "Almanac of the Federal Judiciary." Other resources may be available at your nearest law library.

Some Courtroom Technology Links

In surfing the web to answer some courtroom tech questions, I found the following helpful articles:

"How to Conduct a Digital Trial," by Alan J. Seinberg and Bruce A. Olson (ABA Law Practice Management);

"The Electronic Trial: Seeing is Believing," by William B. Smith and Robert J. Waldsmith (Litigation-Tech);

"How to Use Inexpensive Technology in the Small Case: Equipment and Standardized Exhibits," by William P. Lightfoot (Koonz, McKenney);

"Courtroom Technology--An Introduction to the Onrushing Future, "by Frederic Lederer and Samuel Solomon (ctc-five);

"Courtroom Technology: Lessons to be Learned from Hollywood," by Rick Kraemer and Naomi Musnicki (Executive Presentations, Inc.); and,

"Flat Screens v. Projectors in the Courtroom," by Brett Arquette (Court Tech Forum).

Illinois Ethics Rules

It never hurts to reread the rules. Here's a link to the Illinois Rules of Professional Conduct. Other Illinois ethics resources can be found here.

A Free Organizational Tip

Are you a note-taker like me? If so, try this organizational tip, which seems obvious to me, but which is fairly uncommon among lawyers in my experience.

For each case you're working on, use a separate notepad. Keep the notepad in the case file or in your desk drawer. Every time you work on the case--doing research, preparing for a hearing, etc.--use the notepad for taking notes, keeping the pages together in chronologically-dated entries.

If you're faithful to the system, you'll develop a date-ordered record of your work on the case, whether it spans months, years, or decades. This record will come in handy when you have to revisit an issue you already dealt with during the previous months or years.

When you get to the end of the notepad, label it "Smith v. Jones, Notepad 1," and start a new one. Due to the miracle of memory, you'll always associate particular issues you worked on with particular cases. If you save the notepads, you'll always have the results of your work at your fingertips.

More on Forum Non Conveniens

Lately, the doctrine of forum non conveniens has been generating a lot of interest in Illinois. On this weblog, I wrote about forum non conveniens on February 25, February 26, and February 27.

If those three posts didn't exhaust your patience, be sure to check out the article by Jill Adams in the Illinois Bar Journal: "Dawdy and the Future of Intrastate Forum Non Conveniens in Illinois."

Blogging Article in the Illinois Bar Journal

Details about my article, "What Weblogs Can Do For You," can be found here at Notes from the (Legal) Underground.