At the 2024 Winter Meeting of the Federation of Defense & Corporate Counsel in St. Petersburg, Florida, ALF Executive Vice President & General Counsel Larry Ebner organized and moderated a lively and insightful panel on the many benefits of including an appellate specialist in a civil litigation trial team. FDCC is a prestigious professional organization limited to 1,400 carefully vetted civil litigation defense attorneys and in-house corporate counsel from around the United States. Larry serves as the volunteer chair of FDCC’s Appellate Law Section.
Larry’s distinguished panelists — FDCC members Angela Flowers, Elissa Haynes, Caryn Lilling, Miranda Soto, and Ann Trivett — provided savvy practical advice from both trial and appellate attorneys’ perspectives. Topics included how appellate counsel can help to develop defense strategy, frame key legal defenses & issues, brief & argue threshold motions, identify expert testimony needed for the record, and draft jury instructions & special verdict forms. The panel also discussed how to persuade a corporate client that adding an appellate specialist at the outset of a case can bring great value to a litigation team.
