Reflections on Becoming an Appellate Lawyer Hall of Famer
| Publication year | 2020 |
| Author | By Jon B. Eisenberg |
By Jon B. Eisenberg
Jon B. Eisenberg, an appellate lawyer for four decades, authored The Rutter Group's "California Practice Guide: Civil Appeals and Writs" and is a Past-President of the California Academy of Appellate Lawyers. He has argued 12 cases in the California Supreme Court and some 100 cases in the intermediate appellate courts.
On September 20, 2019, I became the second inductee — the first being Ellis Horvitz — into CLA's Appellate Lawyer Hall of Fame. At the induction event, I spoke of my gratitude for receiving this honor, and I recounted three notable highlights of my 40-year career as an appellate attorney. The task of converting those comments into an article for this journal proved a bit of a challenge, since I had prepared no notes and pretty much spoke off the cuff. Here goes!
Some call it "The Bible" or "The Blue Bible." The Rutter Group calls it California Practice Guide: Civil Appeals and Writs. I usually just call it "that book."
I wrote it — with the assistance of Ellis Horvitz and Justice Howard Wiener — during 1986-1989, and I've updated it yearly since then. It appears to be my magnum opus. It's not War and Peace, but it's nearly as long.
At the time of its writing and publication, I was a staff attorney for Justice Donald B. King at the Court of Appeal in San Francisco. One of my internal devices for getting myself through especially tedious parts of the lengthy writing process — of which there were more than a few — was to visualize the finished product occupying a half-foot of bookshelf space in my office. A cheap thrill, to be sure, but it served its purpose.
A far greater thrill was to see the actual finished product at the end of 1989 — not just in print, but also in the form of a cake. Justice King and his secretary threw me a book party, for which they had the book replicated as a big chocolate cake festooned with gleaming blue and white frosting. That really took the cake. We ate the book.
I have a confession to make. I've always been terrified of public speaking — which would seem to suggest that I chose the wrong profession. As a callow youth, I never — ever — thought I would be able to stand before seven justices of the Supreme Court, maintain my composure, speak coherently, and survive to write about it. And yet I turned out to be pretty good at it. Who knew?
Imagine my surprise in 1999 when I stood before Chief Justice Ronald George and the other six justices of the California Supreme Court — and stayed upright — to argue People ex rel. Department of Corporations v. SpeeDee Oil Change Systems, Inc. (1999) 20 Cal.4th 1135.
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SpeeDee Oil did not implicate fundamental human rights or pose weighty constitutional issues. Such...
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