Remember those early days of your legal career? Perhaps as a student clerk, or a freshly minted JD, remember those first few steps out of the classroom, and into the real world? Remember the terror?
For three years they poured legal knowledge into your head, and perhaps more significantly, they gave you the tools to find the answers you do not know. But sitting down to that first solo client meeting, or making that first shaky rise to address the court, you suddenly came face-to-face with the unnerving truth that the law school curriculum has not completely prepared you to, you know, be a lawyer.
Experience Makes Lawyers
Anxieties are natural for the new lawyer, and over time, as you gained experience, the fears faded into the background. Experience taught you that Judge Smith’s bailiff appreciates a friendly offer to top-off her coffee, a gesture she’ll remember the next time you are double-booked in another courtroom. Or that while the court’s rules say to file three copies, the court’s clerks need at least four copies, so you’d better file five copies, just to be safe. Or that the client sobbing in your office might need a few moments with a Kleenex and a glass of water before you plunge into the details of the affidavit.
Experience has also made you a more efficient practitioner. You are able to organize your efforts to create better value for your clients, and a more rewarding practice for yourself. You know how to do what you do well, and you know that sometimes the best decision is to bring in an outside expert.
Supreme Court brief preparation is utterly unique. Few lawyers have the opportunity to practice in the Court even once in their careers, never mind filing often enough to truly understand all of the intricacies of Supreme Court practice. And sometimes your cases take you into unfamiliar federal circuits. The experts at Cockle Legal Briefs can guide you through the filing and formatting particulars, allowing you to focus your efforts on the legal work.
Experience Makes Supreme Court Consultants
Working with Supreme Court documents is not simply a matter of reading the Court’s Rules. Even if the reader is able to comprehensively absorb every detail, she has only solved half of her problem—like a brand new lawyer, she may know the Rules, but she will not know the necessary information that is not in the Rules. In other words, she will not know what she does not know.
At Cockle Legal Briefs, we know. How can a lawyer not yet admitted to the Supreme Court Bar appear on the brief, even as counsel of record? We know. If your petition references a 100-page exhibit in the record below, do you need to reproduce the entire document in your appendix? We know. How soon should you begin printing your deferred appendix in the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals in order to get it timely filed? We know.
When a Supreme Court filing comes into your office, or your client asks you to appear in a new federal circuit, give us a call to talk through your options. We can give you an estimate over the phone so that you can make an informed, experienced decision about whether we can help you present your best effort to the court.