North Carolina Appellate Practice Blog

I wrote a few days ago about some practitioners experiencing problems with overzealous spam filters catching important notices from our appellate courts. To be clear, this is a user-side issue, not a problem with the appellate courts’ software. Nevertheless, our appellate courts’ wonderful IT team has been looking at ways to mitigate these concerns.

Enter

Trigger warning:  this post may cause appellate lawyers to have nightmares.

There has been a spate of technical glitches on the user side lately that caused critical notices from the North Carolina Court of Appeals to end up in “quarantine” in counsel’s e-mail inboxes.  The emails are transmitted from the Court of Appeals to the

I’m often asked by younger lawyers and law students how a person goes about becoming an appellate lawyer. It’s tricky, because most firms and organizations hoard their plum appellate opportunities for their most experienced practitioners. Yet, you can’t become one of those experienced practitioners without first being given those opportunities. Chicken, egg.

Of course, I’m

[CORRECTION, JANUARY 26, 2024:  Attorney Benjamin Kull, who practices in Durham, pointed out to me that the penultimate paragraph of the original post, discussing searches based on the odor of marijuana, was not accurate.  It has been modified.  Thanks and a tip of the hat to Benjamin!]

            The North Carolina Court of Appeals issued