The Better Chancery Practice Blog

Copied this tip on one way to lose an appeal from a new blog, Lost Gap: Commentary of Mississippi Law:

Attack the trial judge. You might start out by suggesting that he must be on the take because he ruled against you. Or that he is senile or drunk with power, or just plain drunk. Chances are I’ll be seeing that district judge soon at one of those secret conferences where judges go off together to gossip about the lawyers. I find that you can always get a real chuckle out of the district judge by copying the page where he is described as “a disgrace to the robe he wears” or as “mean-spirited, vindictive, biased and lacking in judicial temperament” and sticking it under his nose right as he is sipping his hot soup. Trial judges love to laugh at themselves, and you can be sure that the next time you appear in his courtroom, the judge will find some way of thanking you for the moment of mirth you provided him.

Any trial judge can identify with that heavily tongue-in-cheek humor. We judges do get copies of your briefs and other filing with the appellate courts, and, while it may satisfy your primitive urge to take a retributive swipe in a brief at the one whom you feel wronged you, it’s best to keep in mind that judges are human, and can identify with Shylock’s plaint: “If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, do we not revenge?”

That last statement is a tad much, I believe. Most judges practiced law long enough before taking the bench that they let most slings and arrows bounce off their thick hides. And most judges I know focus on the law and the facts of a given case, and try hard not to let the personalities of the lawyers or parties decide it.

Still, it’s hard to imagine why one would — to paraphrase a colorful, often-used lawyer adage — urinate in the well one has to drink from.

The rest of the post, copied from a law journal article by a Ninth Circuit appellate judge is an eye-opening exposition in outline form of the imaginative ways that lawyers poison their own cases on appeal. It’s something you should copy and put in that special place where you keep your practical practice guide material.

Check out Lost Gap for your legal reading. If it keeps up the way it started, it’s going to be worth looking at regularly. I’ve added a link over there on the right.