A sound appeal should not be a luxury.
It no longer has to be.

AAccess to justice

An appeal is the only check on a trial court's mistake. It is also the last thing standing between a client who won and the judgment that client earned. For many litigants, both sides of it have been priced out of reach. A merit brief billed by the hour is an open-ended commitment, made before anyone knows what the record will support. Clients with real error in their cases decide not to appeal. Clients who won below settle at a discount, or send in a thin brief, because defending the judgment means paying for the case a second time.

The result shows up in the decisions. In more than one of every six Ohio appellate decisions in our database, at least one party had no lawyer at all, and more than one in seven court of appeals decisions reverses the judgment below in whole or in part. A right of appeal that only some clients can afford is not much of a right, and a judgment its winner cannot afford to defend is not much of a judgment. A flat fee of $3,500 for a court of appeals merit brief, appellant's or appellee's, quoted firm before anyone commits, changes who gets to use it.

BTechnology has lowered the cost of high quality work

The expense of an appeal was never the writing. It was the hours: reading the record, finding every decision on point from the district that will hear the case, checking each citation, and conforming the brief to that district's local rules. Technology now does much of that work in a fraction of the time, and it does it against the full text of more than 53,000 Ohio appellate decisions rather than the sample a lawyer has time to read. We put the savings into the price.

The standard did not come down with the cost. The judgment still belongs to lawyers: a lawyer verifies each citation against the official opinion, and an attorney certified as a specialist in appellate law reviews the finished brief for accuracy. That is how a brief can be both affordable and good.

CAppeals are confusing. Navigating them is what we do.

Appellate practice has its own rules, its own deadlines, and its own ways to lose before the court reads a word of the argument. The notice of appeal is ordinarily due 30 days from entry of a final judgment under App.R. 4(A), and post-judgment motions, clerk service, and the type of order can change when that clock starts. The order must be final and appealable. The error must have been preserved below. The standard of review often decides the case before the merits do. Each of Ohio's twelve districts has its own local rules on length, format, appendices, and oral argument. More than 1,700 of the court of appeals decisions in our database end in dismissal.

The appellee's side has traps of its own. The brief is ordinarily due 20 days after the appellant's brief is served under App.R. 18(A) (15 days on an accelerated calendar under App.R. 11.1(C), and a court order can change either), and App.R. 18(C) allows the court to accept the appellant's statement of the facts and issues as correct when the appellee files nothing. An appellee may defend the judgment on grounds the trial court never reached, but an appellee who wants the judgment changed must file a cross-appeal under App.R. 3(C), and the time to do it is short. The strongest arguments for affirmance are often not about who was right at trial: the standard of review, forfeiture, and harmless error.

A trial lawyer who handles one appeal every few years should not have to relearn all of it under a deadline. Appeals are the only work we do. At intake we tell you which dates control, whether the order is appealable, and whether a cross-appeal is needed. Before the brief is written, you receive a memo identifying the two or three issues worth leading with, or the strongest grounds for affirmance, and the standard of review each one travels under. You know the case; we know the road.

DYou decide what the appeal should cost your client

We work for you, not around you. In a consulting engagement, our flat fee is a known cost to your firm, fixed before you quote your client. What you charge your client is your decision, because you are the one who knows the client, the case, and the value of what you add. That holds on either side of the caption. A client who has already paid for a trial and won is often the client least willing to pay by the hour to win again; a fixed number for defending the judgment is an easier conversation.

Some lawyers pass our fee through at cost as a disclosed expense, and the client gets the appeal at the lowest price we know how to offer. Others quote a single fee for the appeal that covers our work together with their own: counseling the client, carrying the knowledge of the case from the trial court, directing which issues matter, reviewing and signing the brief, and standing behind it. Either works. The limits are the ones that already govern every fee you charge: the client knows we are involved and consents (in writing, after full disclosure, whenever fees are divided between firms under Prof.Cond.R. 1.5(e)), and the total fee is reasonable under Prof.Cond.R. 1.5(a). We paper either structure correctly, and we will tell you if the numbers do not work.

See flat fee pricing for appellants and appellees.