Perspectives of a Judicial Intern

Tass Waterston
Intern
Last summer I had the good fortune to be accepted in a summer internship with the Thirteenth court of Appeals in Corpus Christi, Texas. Besides working with a wonderful group of lawyers, students and judges, I was exposed for the first time to the administration and decision making process of a six-member appeals court. The principle luxury of working as a clerk at the appellate level is the amount of time afforded to considering points of criminal and civil law. Recognizing that trial judges and lawyers do not have this privilege, I learned at the expense of having to rewrite a holding in my first opinion that trial courts are frequently given the benefit of the doubt regarding discretionary matters of criminal evidence.

I gained an appreciation of the judge's role in the admission of evidence and the challenges faced in the heat of battle that later must be studiously reviewed by eager law students chomping at the bit to demonstrate their mastery of procedural laws and rules. Understanding that the trial court will often be given the benefit of the doubt, the appellant's briefs I reviewed tended to be of a superior quality than the appellee's briefs. My recommendation, therefore, to those defending an appeal is that by doing one's homework, one will significantly increase the chances of being upheld. The few criminal cases I saw overturned involved abuses of discretion through the trial court s capitulation to over zealous prosecution rather than poor briefing.

For paralegals, it is important that whatever authority used in an appellate brief is properly cited, and that the text is free of grammatical errors. It speaks poorly of one's professionalism when the names of major supreme court cases that law students can recite in their sleep are misspelled. Even worse for attorneys, the appeals court inevitably is less favorably disposed toward the party whose counsel improperly cites the holding of a seminal case. In my brief experience, such malpractice was not known to lose a case; however, such blatant errors in analysis often cost the briefing attorneys valuable time when drafting an opinion. Often the prevailing party's brief would be dismissed and the opposing counsel's brief reworked to form the substance of the decision.

There are, therefore, two practical considerations for submitting quality appellate briefs. First, sound legal analysis in the prevailing party's brief will usually be incorporated directly into the court s opinion when precedent is clearly one-sided. Second, the time saved allows the court to promulgate its opinion much more quickly, thereby reducing invaluable costs to the taxpayer and the client. It is a sound principle that lawyers should convey to their clients that quality work is ultimately less expensive than inferior work. Although not under the mandatory time constraints of most lawyers, appellate judges nevertheless must be responsible for overseeing the work-product of their support staffs and are held to a great degree of public scrutiny for their performance.

As professionals, attorneys and paralegals are under no less scrutiny. With the recent increase in malpractice litigation, it is unquestionably in a lawyer's best interest to produce the highest quality work-product possible. In such a professional climate, the diligence of a competent legal assistant becomes invaluable. Therefore, as subsidiaries of the judicial branch of government, paralegals should be mindful of the crucial role they play in the effective and efficient operation of our criminal justice system.

Tass Waterston is in his third year of law school at SMU in Dallas, where he works as a part-tine clerk for the law firm of McKinley, Ringer and Zeiger, P.C.

TEXAS PARALEGAL JOURNAL
Spring 1997
©1997 Legal Assistants Division, State Bar of Texas

Return to TPJ Seventh Edition

Return to TPJ Home Page