Why the Legal AI Revolution is Actually a Good Thing for Appellate Law ft. David Coale

What if the legal AI revolution is actually a good thing? In this episode of Between the Briefs by Steno, Adrian Cea and Joe Stephens welcome David Coale, partner and leader of the appellate practice at Lynn Pinker Hurst & Schwegman, to unpack how said revolution is transforming appellate law without replacing human judgment.

What You’ll Learn:

How to structure an appellate practice that balances deep legal writing with real-time courtroom advisory work

Why generative AI excels at document digestion, trial transcript summarization and sophisticated legal research

How to draft appellate briefs by writing the argument section first using legal principles, then backfilling facts

Why young attorneys need intensive reps in writing, research and oral advocacy to develop mastery

How a single presidential term of judicial appointments can shape a circuit's jurisprudence for 30+ years

Why the human element of judgement, preparation and understanding remain relevant in appellate advocacy

Tune in for the full deep dive on navigating appellate law in the age of AI.

Highlights:

00:00 Introduction

00:00 The Dual Nature of Modern Appellate Practice

00:02 Building Mastery: Reps, Writing and Deliberate Practice

00:05 Generative AI as Research Partner, Not Brief Writer

00:07 Navigating AI Risks: Citation Hallucination and Quality Control

00:10 What Humans Bring to Appellate Advocacy

00:12 Common Mistakes That Undermine Appellate Work

00:14 Reading Like a Writer: Studying Judicial Craftsmanship

00:17 Strategic Brief Architecture: The Reverse-Engineering Method

00:19 The Intake Process and Case Assessment

00:20 Fifth Circuit Dynamics: How Politics Shapes Appellate Dockets

00:23 Presidential Appointments as Multi-Generational Court Shapers

00:27 Judicial Resources and the Reality of Appellate Workload

00:28 Trial Experience and Appellate Excellence: Finding Your Path

00:31 Writing as Creative Practice, Not Compliance Exercise

00:33 Intellectual Influences and Maintaining Sharp Analysis

00:33 The Future of Law: AI Integration and Professional Transformation

00:37 Key Takeaways: Excellence in the Age of Appellate Innovation

Quotes:

"Half of my practice is writing learned intellectual briefs to courts and appeals. The other half is providing advice to very smart, very aggressive trial lawyers, often on the fly while they're at the courthouse when something comes up. I call it the drop in traffic, and it's absolutely fascinating because it keeps me from getting to Ivory Tower."
"You gotta get reps in to develop the skills, and that means writing whatever needs to be written, offering to do whatever. It's fundamentally a written practice, and you have to like writing and the process of sitting there and getting it done. If you like writing, you need to practice it to get better at it, and you need extra reps writing articles to hone those skills."
"What AI forces you to confront is what am I really adding as a human being to this? Certain parts of the briefing process now take a lot less time and energy than they used to, which frees me up to do more meaningful stuff. The net is a better product in the end because I'm spending my time on way more beneficial work than me digging around in a bunch of boxes."
"Generative AI is here to stay, and ChatGPT was released three and a half years ago, but the ChatGPT today is unrecognizable from what it was. In another four years, it's going to significantly impact society and the profession, with fewer new lawyers hired and overwhelming changes to what humans do in the legal system."