CLE Program Covers Essential Strategies for Effective Appellate Advocacy
November 05, 2025
From left to right: Judge John P. Howard III, Judge Neomi Rao, and Douglas Letter of the Brady Campaign to Reduce Gun Violence
More than 80 attorneys turned out on October 24 for the D.C. Bar CLE Program’s Appellate Advocacy 2025 to hear from judges and expert practitioners on how best to prepare for litigation.
Douglas Letter, chief legal officer for the Brady Campaign to Reduce Gun Violence and former director of the U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Division Appellate Staff, presided over most of the discussions. During the first morning session, Letter talked with Judge John P. Howard III of the D.C. Court of Appeals and Judge Neomi Rao of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit about their tips for presenting arguments effectively.
“I like a well-written, short introduction,” Rao said about introductory briefs that provide a complete overview of the merits. “Since our cases are quite complicated and technical, it’s not always easy to [determine] the meat of [a case] — what is the part [we] care about the most.”
“But if it’s several pages that sharply point out what the issues are and why they’re important, I find [that] quite helpful,” Rao added.
The judges recommended listening carefully during oral argument and providing the most succinct, but meaningful, responses possible. “I get irritated when someone doesn’t answer my question,” Howard said. “I’ll press it maybe one more time. But after that, you’ve lost your chance to answer my question because you’ve told me that you’re not interested in answering it.”
Howard said he also pays attention when lawyers tend to address only one person on the panel, or when women get cut off more than men during oral arguments. In the heat of an oral argument, Howard recommended “keeping the adrenaline down and the conversations calm” to serve the client in the best possible way.
Letter recalled being on an advisory committee assigned with revising the rules of the D.C. Circuit Court handbook. “One of the things that I was expressly told to put in the handbook was [to] not use acronyms that are not extremely well-established.” He also mentioned that clerks may return briefs if there are too many substantive footnotes.
Having worked in the government, Rao agreed with Letter’s assessment, saying that briefs are hard to read when there are too many acronyms. “It’s just not very good writing to use an acronym that is hard to remember,” Rao said. “Sometimes, people would only use an acronym twice in a brief. But by the time you’re on page 30, you have no idea what the acronym was. If you’re citing something only twice, you don’t need an acronym. Just put the words in.”
Rao also advised against having too many substantive footnotes in the briefs. “Again, it’s a matter of good writing. If there’s an important thing you want the judge to focus on, don’t stick it in a long footnote,” she said. “Try to keep things that are important in the text.”
Write Persuasively, Tell a Good Story
In sessions later in the day, attorneys dove into the finer points of persuasive writing and the art of giving compelling oral presentations. Kirti Datla, director of strategic legal advocacy at Earthjustice, said attorneys should always keep in mind their audience — the judges deciding the case and the law clerks handling the briefs. Arguments should be persuasive yet easy for the judges to read and follow, she added.
“Credibility is everything,” Datla said. “If the courts can’t trust your presentation regarding basic aspects of the case, you don’t want [them] to have to go off into the wilderness on their own .… The court is not going to want to do work for you.”
Datla recommended addressing some of the more challenging parts of the case head-on in the brief while still outlining why the court should rule in your favor, Datla said. Careless writing with grammatical or punctuation errors will weaken the credibility of a brief, she stressed.
“I’ve heard a judge say that he would prefer if all adverbs were deleted from all briefs,” Datla said. “Words like ‘clearly’ and ‘obviously’ should be used sparingly.” And, of course, attorneys should avoid writing false statements as well as overstatements, Datla added.
Caroline Van Zile, solicitor general at the Office of the Attorney General for the District of Columbia, also emphasized the importance of writing a strong brief. She pointed out that sometimes attorneys will only get to argue their cases through the written briefs.
“The briefs may be your only chance to persuade the judges,” Van Zile said. “But even if that’s not the case and you do have an opportunity for argument, think about the position the judge [is] in when they show up for oral argument. The law clerk has already written a memo recommending to affirm or reverse.”
The panelists recommended that attorneys read all the written briefs and related cases before appearing in court. Sean Lev, partner at HWG LLP, said that before oral argument, he always thinks back to the first day he worked on the case. “I think that’s the best mirror of how a court is going to look at it,” he said. “[The courts] aren’t going to spend months thinking about it. I also think of the three or four main points of my arguments.”
The panelists also stressed the importance of telling a good story rather than giving a blow-by-blow recitation of facts in chronological order, advising attorneys to split background information into a separate statutory or regulatory section to avoid interrupting the factual narrative.
Attorneys should lead with their strongest arguments and provide a narrative recitation of facts, the panelists recommended.
“Try not to waste the court’s time,” said Erica Hashimoto, a law professor at Georgetown University. “There’s a very strong instinct to tell the court everything you know about a topic because you spent a long time learning about it. They don’t want to hear all that. Tell them what your argument is — how the case law or statute helps you — and then why you’re right. Then move on to your next point.”
