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18 Summer 2015 The Mississippi Lawyer Interview with Chief Judge L. Joseph Lee certainly capable. So I can just say to sum it up collaboration and listening. MC What is your role as Chief Judge of the Mississippi Court of Appeals JL My role as Chief Judge is in essence being the leader as we call it among equals. And that is to say I am the spokesperson. I am responsible for administrative affairs and I preside over all en bancs. I have the responsibility for ensuring the Court conducts its business in a timely uniform and professional manner. These administrative responsibilities are in addition to being an active voting mem- ber of the Court with the same workload as our other nine judges. MC What are common mistakes that lawyers make in handling appeals JL One of the most common is failure to proofread briefs for accuracy and grammatical errors. Let me just say this if a lawyer presents a brief that is shab- bily written that indicates to me that this lawyer is not attentive to detail and cor- rectness. It is really fatal for a lawyer to misstate the facts of the case by taking something out of context and using an excerpt to try and mislead the Court additionally having an erroneous cite. And so what I would say is research your issues stand behind them if they are good and valid. If not do not try to mislead the Court because we are going to double check your briefs and arguments. MC When a case is before the Court of Appeals how important is a lawyers credibility JL A lawyers credibility is paramount in any court whether it is the Court of Appeals or whether it is a justice court county court any trial court or whether it is in the day-to-day office practice of dealing with other lawyers. Credibility is of utmost importance. I cannot say enough about it. I have very little patience with a lawyer who deviates from reputable practice and chooses to engage in conduct that is unbecoming of a lawyer. MC Judge Lee in your opinion what are the particular attributes of an effective brief JL First of all we do not grade them by the pound or the pages. If it requires a number of pages to state your position so be it. Please do not be unnecessarily repetitive saying the same thing four or five times we get it. If a brief is mean- ingless if the issues presented really are not valuable and we have to read that you can imagine that is not going to go very far with us. We get a lot of pro se briefs from prisoners. If they have a valid issue we are going to review it notwith- standing that the brief may not be as elo- quent as one prepared by an attorney. Also some briefs are overly flowery and voluminous but really say nothing. They are not very impressive. In essence to have an effective brief say what you mean and mean what you say in clear concise language. MC Is there a part of a brief that you consider most important Why JL I think all aspects of a brief are important. On the Court of Appeals our responsibility is to take the facts of the case and apply the law as enunciated by the Supreme Court. In a perfect world we already have the law to follow all we have to do is make sure we have got the facts correct. However it does not always work that way. Although reserved for the Supreme Court we do on rare occasion get cases of first impression. We really have to do some digging on these cases. In summation it is important that briefs have clear concise recitation of facts together with accurate citations of the law. MC What common mistakes do you see in brief writing JL Well there are several. First is the failure to proofread for grammar and erroneous citations. Second when the parties ask for oral argument the Rules specifically state that they should give a brief statement as to why oral argument would be beneficial to the Court. More often than not the attorneys merely put a statement on the brief saying oral argu- ment requested or oral argument not requested. Some judges will not grant oral argument if the parties fail to follow the rule. I look at the briefs and if I deem oral argument would be beneficial then I usually grant. Go back over your brief several times. We do. In fact when I am reading briefs I will sometimes mark through them or put typos or correct them out of frus- tration. And of course misrepresentation that is an absolute fatal error. No mat- ter how painful it may be always be hon- est in your brief. MC Can bad writing lose a case and can good writing help win a close case JL Well you would like to think not. You would like to think that with good or bad writing the facts of the case and the legal issues are paramount and that somehow we are going to weed through everything and come up with a just and correct decision. And that basically is the case. Now lets talk about a close deci- sion where good writing might prevail. Lets talk in terms of a chancery matter where the chancellor has been given the task of making a decision in equity. It is not a clear-cut legal issue they have to make a decision one way or the other based on the facts. In chancery practice for instance there are lots of cases that establish guidelines that a chancellor is to follow. As an example if it is a custody matter we have what we call the Albright factors. If it is a division of property we have the Ferguson factors and so forth. If you are presented with a brief that is very good and very convincingly shows that the chancellor missed it in following the factors then yes. In that instance a good brief can prevail. That is an exam- On the Court of Appeals our responsibility is to take the facts of the case and apply the law as enunciated by the Supreme Court.