Appellate Business Development: Tips from Experienced Practitioners. How do you become the appellate lawyer that both trial lawyers and their clients seek out?

• Author: Mary-Christine (M.C.) Sungaila
• Pages: 19-21

Appellate Practice

Winter 2020, Vol. 39 No. 2

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March 05, 2020

Appellate Business Development: Tips from

Experienced Practitioners

How do you become the appellate lawyer that both trial

lawyers and their clients seek out?

By Mary-Christine (M.C.) Sungaila

Developing an appellate practice—and, most particularly, attracting and keeping clients—

can be tricky. Most clients do not have repeat appellate needs. And reaching those clients

who do have appellate needs may be difficult, especially because they likely already have

trial counsel. So how do you become the appellate lawyer that both trial lawyers and their

clients seek out?

Development of Skills and Contacts

First, be very good at what you do, and become widely known for that among potential

clients and the legal community more broadly. As one of my early mentors told me,

developing a reputation as an appellate lawyer can take many more years than it does to

develop one as a trial lawyer; the cases that we handle take years to make it through the

appellate court, such that most folks will not be aware of the caliber of cases you are being

hired for until three or more years later, when the appellate opinion issues. In the early

years, your focus must be on the work, and on gaining skills and judgment.

Then what? In all business-development activities, it is helpful to consider that work may

come from clients, trial lawyers, and other appellate lawyers or judges—or all of the above.

It can often be important to be the first choice of both the client and trial counsel; a vote of

confidence from an appellate practitioner or judge cannot hurt either.

Categorizing Business-Development Priorities

For my part, I divide my business-development time into three areas: (1) reputation

development (contributing to leading appellate treatises, writing articles, guest blogging,

commenting in the media, law school teaching, speaking on panels five to seven times a

year, and taking on significant pro bono cases), (2) relationship development (e.g., bar and

civic leadership, regular phone calls and contact with clients), and (3) new matter

development (nurturing relationships with referral sources and potential new clients).