A Practical Guide to Appellate Advocacy

The original process-based text for teaching students how to write a brief, A Practical Guide to Appellate Advocacy illuminates each step with clear, specific guidance and annotated examples of both good and bad writing that illustrate how it's done.

A Practical Guide to Appellate Advocacyis the original process-based persuasive writing text. With her trademark specificity and clarity, author Mary Beth Beazley explains each step in the process of writing a legal brief, using annotated good and bad examples that illustrate how it's done. Recognizing the needs of neophyte legal writers, the text offers formulas such as CREAC that students can use to write sound arguments, effective case descriptions, and thesis sentences. In addition, Chapter 4, "Facing the Blank Page", offers solutions for addressing procrastination; Chapter 14 provides thorough coverage to prepare students for Moot Court Competitions, with helpful advice for communicating productively with teachers, mentors, and moot court coaches. Now a Connected eBook, A Practical Guide to Appellate Advocacyoffers a host of supportive resources and materials on CasebookConnect, such as sample briefs and motions, guidance on brief writing style and citation, and reference material for court rules and related sources.

New to the Sixth Edition:

• Updated to reflect changes in law school and practice in response to the COVID pandemic, with detailed guidance on how to participate in online oral arguments
• Streamlined to ensure that the text remains succinct and timely through successive editions
• Recall and Review self-assessment questions at the end of each chapter

Professors and students will benefit from:

• Annotated examples of both good and bad legal writing
• End-of-chapter summaries and Recall and Review questions
• Balanced coverage of legal reasoning, rhetoric, and skills
• Generous fund of resources on CC, including additional sample documents, exercises, and other pedagogical materials
• Four-part process for writing a brief: 1) prewriting (research, analysis, outline); 2) writing (first draft); 3) revising (second draft); 4) polishing (final draft)
• Uses humor and interesting examples to engage and teach, for example...
• Uses "phrase-that-pays" instead of "key terms" to remind students to focus on the specific language in controversy when they analyze legal rules
• Uses "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon" to explain how to make connections between the various points in their arguments.