The New York State Bar Association is proud to present this program in cooperation with the Appellate Defender Council and the Statewide Appellate Support Center of the New York State Office of Indigent Legal Services. This two-day training for defense counsel providing mandated representation on criminal and Family Court appeals will offer four CLE credits through virtual plenary sessions as well as an additional six CLE credits for a limited number of in-person practitioners who will work in small groups practicing appellate brief writing skills using their own cases. Participants can register for only the virtual sessions or for both the virtual sessions and in-person small group sessions in Albany.

Providing meaningful appellate and post-conviction representation involves more than reading the appellate record, speaking with your client, and perfecting a brief. This two-day brief writing training will provide deep insight into how to persuasively convey your clients’ stories of injustice. The training will feature a session on combatting and litigating racial inequities in your cases, which will be presented by a nationally recognized criminal justice reform expert who has successfully litigated in the United States Supreme Court a challenge to the introduction of explicitly racially biased evidence. You will also learn how to develop a theory of your case through brainstorming and working collaboratively and how to use that theory to craft powerful introductions, statements of facts, and arguments, thanks to highly regarded institutional office practitioners. Finally, you will hear from an award-winning author and journalist about his own powerful experience in telling the story of a wrongful conviction. Additionally, the small group sessions will allow criminal and Family Court defense practitioners providing mandated representation to work collaboratively and in person to apply the skills learned in the plenary sessions to their own cases. These small group sessions will be guided by appellate and post-conviction practitioners from across New York State.