The First Commandment: Know Why Your Client Should Prevail
It is basic, but critical, to persuade the court that the result
you seek is the right result. The court has to feel good about
ruling in favor of your client. Judge Gurfein (2d Cir.): "It
is still the mystery of the appellate process that a result is
reached in an opinion on thoroughly logical and precedential
grounds while it was first approached as the right and fair thing
to do."
The Statement of Case and Facts is critical in this regard. You
are most likely to prevail if your properly presented statement of
the facts — without argument — makes the reader believe
that your client should prevail. In order to do this, you should
not set out the facts in the same way in every brief; sometimes you
may need a chronology of facts, other times you may not.
