AmLaw Litigation Daily: Are Law Schools Doing Enough to Train Appellate Lawyers? Kirk Pittard Weighs In

AmLaw Asks: Are Law Schools Doing Enough to Train Appellate Lawyers?

Appellate advocacy is increasingly recognized as a critical, yet sometimes overlooked, area of legal training and law school curricula. A recent Law.com AmLaw Litigation Daily article explored this issue, featuring insights from prominent appellate attorneys across the U.S., including Durham, Pittard & Spalding’s Kirk Pittard.

Writes AmLaw Litigation Daily:

Many appellate attorneys trace their interest and expertise to post-graduation experiences, including clerkships and hands-on appellate work, rather than formal law school training. Still, law schools do provide some exposure through moot court competitions, appellate writing courses, and specialized seminars. Practitioners argue that such experiences can profoundly shape a student’s understanding of the appellate process, equipping them with skills that go beyond trial advocacy.

Practical Experience Shapes Appellate Careers

In the article, Pittard shares his perspective on how law school prepared him for a career in appellate law.

Kirk Pittard of Durham, Pittard & Spalding in Dallas says he learned a lot about appellate law while attending Baylor University School of Law. He said moot court “helped me a lot with regard to writing briefs and developing an oral argument style and oral argument skills” and law review helped him with research and writing skills. He also commends an appellate procedure class he took and another called Supreme Court Seminar, in which students hear actual U.S. Supreme Court cases and review documents from those cases before issuing their own rulings.

Pittard also had clerkships in the Court of Appeals in Amarillo and the Mississippi Supreme Court during summer breaks and had a yearlong clerkship in the Court of Appeals in Dallas after finishing law school. During law school, he intended to be a litigator, but after law school and his clerkships, when he took a job with a small litigation firm and was asked to work on appeals, he said he realized he preferred that area over trying cases.

“One thing that’s important for all schools, and if they don’t focus on this, they should, is just legal writing—legal writing, research and analysis,” Pittard says. “I think that law schools should very much continue to emphasize legal writing, because in this day and age of texting and emojis and abbreviated communications with people, the art of writing, I think, is kind of losing its luster.”

Click here to read the article.

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