DeNovo: A Virginia Appellate Law Blog

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Last week, the VBA’s appellate practice section put on a top-notch panel on perspectives in appellate advocacy. The panelists were Judge Friedman of the CAV, Erin Ashwell, and Matt McGuire, with Kendall Burchard moderating.

Judge Friedman, in particular, stressed a few themes:

  • Competition for judges’ time and attention. Judge Friedman reported that the CAV has

Christmas is always a super-stressful time of year for me, but not for any of the normal reasons that plague sane people. My problem is that the people who know and love me tend to get me books–which makes sense, because books and bicycles are basically the twin obsessions of my sad life. The trouble

An anonymous reader asks if Virginia’s appellate courts are ratcheting down on the use of motions to reconsider to preserve error.

Here’s the background: Traditionally, appellate counsel have used motions to reconsider to clean up the record and preserve new arguments for appeal. It was fairly normal for an appellate lawyer to be hired after

Over the last two months, the Court of Appeals has issued almost 160 opinions. The vast majority of those opinions are unpublished; the court is issuing about 7 unpublished opinions for every published opinion. So the default rule seems to not to publish opinions.

This is interesting for several reasons. First, Code § 17.1-413(A) says