Preventing Nightmares: Preserving Issues and Avoiding Waiver - Trial Techniques That Lead to Successful Appeals Seminar Materials

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All too often, lawyers arrive in appellate courts with a solid argument for reversal, only to learn that their promising issue has been waived by a failure to preserve it in the trial court. In this program, two experienced appellate lawyers explain some of the ways to avoid having to answer troubling waiver questions at the appellate lectern. The material focuses on hidden waiver traps and on the contemporaneous objection rule, recognizing the fact that preservation isn’t an appellate skill: it’s a trial-court skill.

These seminar materials were published in August 2011. They are available only as a PDF download; however, the user has a license to print the materials if this format is more desirable. Please see the information on electronic books.

Copyright © 2011 Virginia Law Foundation. All rights reserved.

Table of Contents

1. The demurrer trap

2. The motion-in-limine trap

3. The trial-evidence traps

        A. The expert-witness trap

        B. . The activist-judge trap

        C. . The redaction trap

        D. The cross-examination trap

        E. . The specificity trap

4. Jury-instruction traps

        A. The compromise trap

        B. The model-jury-instruction trap

        C. The invisible-argument trap

        D. The waiver-by-consent trap

5. The closing-argument trap

6. The appellate traps

        A. The issue-selection trap

        B. The successful-appellant trap

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