Appellate Practice Certification.

• Author: Moses, Jamie Billotte
• Position: Annual Reports of Committees of the Florida Bar: 2018-2019

As interest in appellate practice continues to grow, the work of the Appellate Practice Certification Committee continues to expand. The committee was fortunate to gain four new members this year who brought their expertise and enthusiasm to the tasks at hand. In addition to writing the exam questions--a feat in itself --the committee worked on approving those seeking initial certification or recertification.

The start of the year was comprised of reviewing the feedback received on the prior year's exam and addressing those issues in this year's exam. Of course, writing the exam takes significant time and effort. Most committee members will agree that writing the questions is much more difficult than anticipated. Given the exam addresses so many areas of appellate practice, most committee members had to draft questions outside their personal expertise. Although daunting, the task does present an opportunity to expand one's field of knowledge.

In addition to exam writing, the committee is tasked with evaluating those seeking initial certification and/or recertification. This year was a banner year for the committee. Thirty-three initial applications were received. Of those 33, 27 sat for the exam. As of the writing of this report, we do not know how many passed. Twenty-six certified attorneys sought recertification. Of course, as the number of appellate board certified lawyers increases, so will the recertification numbers.

Two issues continue to hinder the application or recertification process: peer review and oral arguments. As for peer review, many judges and lawyers either fail to return the peer review requests or, if they do return them, state they do not have sufficient knowledge to evaluate the applicant. This requires the committee to send out additional peer review requests which simply slows the process down. This can be frustrating...