Federal Judiciary

"Motions: Dispositive and Otherwise" - Federal Court Practice seminar

By Michael C. Smith

Compared to the trip to New York the week before, Friday was a leisurely drive down to Houston and back for the annual Federal Court Practice seminar put on by the State Bar of Texas.  I even got to take in the federal judges panel at lunch with Judges Hilda Tagle, Xavier Rodriguez, Reed O'Connor and Ron Clark (one from each Texas federal district) and the panel on ECF best practices before presenting on "Motions: Dispositive and Otherwise."  Left after getting our boys ready for school, and got back in time to pick up pizza on the way in from Gucci's for our oldest's sleepover party for his 11th birthday (Gucci's chocolate chip dessert pizza is the birthday cake of choice locally, as you can see).

Although the theme of my presentation was really using motion practice - and dispositive motion practice more specifically - to illustrate the process of reviewing the different (although not exactly byzantine) applicable rules that practitioners have to comply with in federal court, the judges panel spoke at some length about how federal courts are courts of motion practice, so to address some of the issues that came up during the panel I shorted the "rules, rules and more rules" part of the presentation and spent half my time (a luxurious 45 minutes - I usually only get 30) talking about practice tips on motions practice.  Things like playing nice (avoiding excessive poison-pen rhetoric), writing text that judges can use (plaigiarism by a district court is the ultimate achievement for a written advocate), using the right kinds of cites, and what I think law clerks like and dislike in briefing (hint, shorter is better).  That sort of thing.

But an enjoyable drive, a good audience, and a topic that ended up being hopefully more helpful than I thought it was going to be.

Full post as published by Eastern District of Texas Federal Court Practice on May 17, 2010 (boomark / email).