Appellate Ethics: Avoiding Missteps That Violate the Duties of Competence, Diligence, and Communication
This program offers 90 minutes of Ethics credit.
A live 90-minute CLE video webinar with interactive Q&A
This CLE will discuss key appellate and judicial ethics cases from 2024, with a focus on California and Ninth Circuit cases. The webinar will assist appellate lawyers in navigating ethical minefields and balancing zealous advocacy against the duties of competence, diligence, and candor owed to the appellate court, especially when arguing for an extension, modification, or change in the law. The panel will also address counsel's duty not to engage in illegitimate criticism of the trial court or the judiciary.
Outline
- Evaluating the appeal
- Weighing the merits
- Preservation of error
- Standard of review
- Harmless error
- The legal merits
- The equitable merits
- Relief available on appeal
- Calculating the costs
- Out-of-pocket costs
- Attorney fees
- Responsibility for the other party's attorney fees and costs
- Delay or loss of the use of funds, including interest
- Comparing the merits and the costs
- Weighing the merits
- Communicating with and educating the client
- Issue selection
- Who selects
- Ethics of issues selection
- Relying on information not in the record
- Brief writing
- Acknowledging adverse facts and law
- Unpublished cases
- Timeliness
- Oral argument and waiver
- Maintaining respect for the court
- Duty of candor
- Legal issues
- Non-legal issues
- The client is missing
- The client is not indigent
- Mootness after appeal
Benefits
The panel will explore these and other compelling questions:
- How do the ethics rules help define the boundaries of permissible arguments on appeal?
- What exactly is a frivolous appeal and what options does counsel have if an appeal would be frivolous?
- What does “civility” really mean in the appellate context?
Faculty
Patrice Ruane
Attorney
Manatt, Phelps & Phillips
Ms. Ruane is a litigation associate in the Firm’s Los Angeles office. Prior to joining Manatt, she clerked... | Read More
Ms. Ruane is a litigation associate in the Firm’s Los Angeles office. Prior to joining Manatt, she clerked for the Honorable Brian M. Hoffstadt on the California Court of Appeal, Second District.
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Benjamin G. Shatz
Partner & Certified Appellate Specialist
Manatt Phelps & Phillips
Mr. Shatz Co-Chairs Manatt's Appellate Practice Group. He has briefed hundreds of civil appeals, writs, and... | Read More
Mr. Shatz Co-Chairs Manatt's Appellate Practice Group. He has briefed hundreds of civil appeals, writs, and petitions to the U.S. Supreme Court, U.S. Courts of Appeals, California Supreme Court, and California Courts of Appeal, covering a multitude of areas of law. He is a frequent lecturer and author, published in California Litigation, California Lawyer, Los Angeles Lawyer, Inside Counsel, The Daily Journal, The Recorder, For the Defense, California Defender, CEB Civil Litigator Reporter, and many other legal publications.
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