The future is in San Francisco

Next week I am off to the biannual meeting of the American Academy of Appellate Lawyers in San Francisco, and the program looks great.  A gaggle of in-house counsel will be discussing the future of legal practice, taking a snapshot of 2027.  Then law school representatives will speak about what they are doing to meet the needs of that future, and making sure students are getting trained in appellate practice, now that it has become an accepted specialty field.  Then panelists are going to talk about suggested changes in the Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure, and then, more generally, spearheaded by the Chief Judge for the Ninth Circuit, the future of the federal appellate courts.  We wrap up with a session on access to justice, on recent developments in that arena.  As always, your intrepid reporter will provide a full download.

As our regular readers know, the last AAAL meeting was held in Boston.  The last issue of my AAAL Appellate Advocate has a full report of that conference, mirroring my download here, along with photos of those who participated, including Justice Alexander and First Circuit Judges Thompson, Kayatta and Barron.  One statistic Justice Alexander mentioned that I was reminded of, and is consistent with my last blog entry regarding the present and probable future, is that of the 300-400 opinions the Law Court issues a year, only three in 2016 resulted from appeals of civil jury trials.  (Civil trials in the federal district court of Maine are similarly few and far between).