The California Appellate Law Podcast

Tom Fay spent years as the lead civil writs attorney for California's 4th District, Division 3, processing every emergency petition that crossed the court's threshold. Effective June 29, 2026, he's now Judge Tom Fay of the Orange County Superior Court. We caught Judge Fay between appointments for an inside look at what actually happens when your writ petition hits the clerk's d...

One of just 12 California lawyers dual-certified in both family and appellate law, Lisa McCall has an unusually clear view of how family trial work plays out on appeal. Lisa shares the record‑killing mistakes family lawyers often make. And with 14 published opinions, Lisa shares about publish-worthy issues and her work on the amicus committee at the Association of Certified Family Law Specialists...

John Snow, Director of Legal and Trial Training at the Los Angeles City Attorney's Office and author of Rules to Speak By (Carolina Academic Press, 2026), joins Tim Kowal and Jeff Lewis to discuss what it actually takes to be an effective oral advocate. Snow has tried more than 30 cases to completion in state and federal court and spent years designing trial training programs for lawyers at t...

Drawing on 20 years observing attorney behavior, Hon. Stuart M. Rice (ret.) now at JAMS, speaks freely. This episode is a rare candid debrief from the other side of the bench. Key topics: What incivility actually costs you in court: Judge Rice served on the statewide civility task force and watched uncivil conduct for two decades. His diagnosis: it's not the screamer at deposition—it's t...

Does your office have a blank 170.6 form ready to go for a certain judge? Stop doing that. A 170.6 peremptory challenge is no longer automatic: the California Supreme Court now authorizes courts to look behind your 170.6. The touchstone is whether your 170.6 is based on a genuine belief of prejudice—or mere grievance. But first, a $3 million sanctions order against Quinn Emanuel in a big‑pharma ad...

The fall of copyright troll Prenda Law is, according to the ABA Journal, "part of legal folklore." We talk with the attorney who kicked over the first domino, Morgan Pietz. Prenda Law was the copyright trolling operation that filed approximately 20,000 abusive BitTorrent lawsuits targeting anonymous defendants for alleged pornography downloads. Morgan's work on that case resulted in...

Everyone is watching Family Violence Appellate Project v. Superior Court (S288176) to see if the California Supreme Court is going to strike down the ban on electronic recording of court proceedings. There is a steady drumbeat in favor, including the Los Angeles County Superior Court and other courts. But are we missing a perspective? Stephanie Leslie is the immediate past president of the Califor...

The Honorable Tani Cantil-Sakauye led the state judiciary through the Great Recession's budget crisis, bail reform advocacy, and the COVID-19 pandemic. Now she has three new roles: President and CEO of the Public Policy Institute of California, a neutral at ADR Services, and a founding voice of the Alliance of Former Chief Justices. CJ Cantil-Sakauye talks with Tim Kowal and Jeff Lewis about...

In addition to having more than 100 published opinions and close to 100 oral arguments to his name, Jeremy B. Rosen is the managing partner of the Horvitz & Levy LLP San Francisco office. Jeremy is also nationally recognized for his First Amendment and anti-SLAPP work. Jeremy joins Jeff and Tim on the California Appellate Law Podcast to discuss: How does Horvitz & Levy sustain a practice t...

Justice Ming Chin wrote more majority opinions in his first decade on the California Supreme Court than any colleague—then retired to discover that mediation feels a lot like his first judicial assignment in family law, where the goal was bringing people together rather than telling them what to do. Justice Ming’s biggest pet peeve as a mediator: attorneys who won’t share their briefs. Justice Min...

Legal writing authority Ross Guberman has been busy absorbing AI tools into his popular BriefCatch and now-related suite of writing tools. Ross returns to discuss how BriefCatch cousin app RealityCheck uses a traditional authority base plus AI power to ruthlessly search and destroy hallucinations in your briefs. Who else is using RealityCheck? Courts. So let RealityCheck find hallucinations for yo...

The law is riddled with things "everybody knows" that aren't actually true. In this April Fool's-themed episode, Tim Kowal and Jeff Lewis discuss several legal myths, half-truths, and courtroom fictions—from rules of evidence to constitutional assumptions to a Scopes Monkey Trial mythology that is more Hollywood script than record. Key points: Miranda warnings aren't in th...

David Lat—founder of Above the Law and author and host of Original Jurisdiction blog and podcast—explains what these stories reveal about a legal profession navigating ideological warfare, economic disruption, and the enduring craft of persuasion. Paul Clement delivered what SCOTUSblog called "a master class in oral argument" in Trump v. Cook . Lat dissects what made it a master class—by...

Two explosive First Amendment cases from the Ninth Circuit show how culture-war flashpoints are reshaping speech doctrine and judicial decorum.  In B.B. v. Capistrano Unified , the court held that elementary students have enforceable free speech rights under Tinker , vacating summary judgment after a first grader was disciplined for giving a classmate a pro-BLM drawing.  Meanwhile, in Olympus Spa...

Justice Kagan has more words about the emergency docket, aka shadow docket. This one is about the 9th Circuit panel injunction of California’s law requiring school officials not to share with parents when their children present as trans. The Supreme Court keeps the injunction in effect. And on the fee award front, big firms don’t automatically get a lodestar boost. Plus, a debrief from oral argume...

Three paradoxes feature in this episode: Paradox 1: You must disclose a bankruptcy stay to the Court of Appeal. What about a bankruptcy that does not create a stay? Answer: Yes, the disclose-bk-stay rule also means disclose a bk non-stay. Paradox 2: Deadbeat dad owes $500k. He settles and agrees to pay $250k. How much does he owe? Answer: Still $500k. Paradox 3: District court 1 rules AI work prod...

In Part 2 of our conversation with Michael Shipley, Tim and Jeff dig into the real-world fallout of California's no-horizontal-stare-decisis rule — and the structural fix Shipley has been developing to address it. Shipley walks Tim and Jeff through his proposed "mini-en banc" transfer mechanism — a way for the California Supreme Court to empower a designated Court of Appeal panel to...

California is the largest common-law jurisdiction where appellate courts don't follow each other—and it happened by accident. In Part 1 of this two-part episode, Michael Shipley explains how Bernard Witkin’s treatise reflections on case dicta became binding law, why the federal circuit model works differently, and what the rule costs practitioners and trial judges every day. Key points: The W...

In the first half of their conversation with James Mixon, Managing Attorney at California's Second District Court of Appeal, Tim Kowal and Jeff Lewis ask what is healthy AI use, and unhealthy use? To help organize—yes! To replace judgment—no! Tip: When an attorney does not read AI output before filing a brief, expect sanctions. James draws on his role on the judicial branch AI Task Force and...

Is your AI training data biased? And is using AI-generated reasoning plagiarism? James Mixon, Managing Attorney at California's Second District Court of Appeal, covers troubling topics on how lawyers should, and should not, use AI. In this second part of Tim and Jeff’s conversation, James discusses how we can detect and counteract bias baked into training data. And what happens when trial jud...

Lemon Law lawyer Michelle Fonseca-Kamana discusses the seismic shifts in California lemon law—from the Supreme Court's decision in Rodriguez v. FCA US LLC (October 31, 2024) 17 Cal.5th 189 that effectively eliminated most used car claims, to the explosion in case filings (from 4,500 in 2015 to over 22,000 in 2023), to new legislative reforms under AB 1755 and SB 26 that impose strict timeline...

You have to literally disobey an order in California to be held in contempt. But federal courts are a little more touchy-feely: they will find a contempt for violating the “spirit” of their orders. Tim and Jeff compare the Ninth Circuit's contempt finding against Apple in the Epic Games dispute, and a state litigant who got around a visitation-time order but without violating the letter of th...

California’s New Legal Rules for 2026: AI, Photo Proof of Service, and Simpler Statements of Decision New statutes and court rules taking effect in 2026 and 2027 will change how California lawyers serve papers, preserve appellate issues, and disclose their use of artificial intelligence. Appellate attorneys Tim Kowal and Jeff Lewis focus on what actually matters in practice—what to fix now, and wh...

AI-sanctions might get eyeballs, but the bigger sanctions are still for plain old bad lawyering. Jeff also raises this ethical and pragmatic question: who defends the lawyer when sanctions threaten the client? Should counsel facing an OSC retain separate counsel for the sanctions component to avoid divided attention and better protect client interests? What if the costs of independent counsel are...

A scandalous Netflix documentary called an unconventional sex-based therapy business an “orgasm cult,” all based on a sole source whose account has several flaws. But the Court of Appeal dismissed the defamation case on anti-SLAPP grounds. Tim and Jeff discuss whether any California defamation case against a media company could survive the one-two punch of anti-SLAPP and NY Times v. Sullivan. They...