Advanced Civil Appellate Practice CLE

I'm in Austin tonight.  Drove in this morning to attend the first day of the CLE.  I'll be attending the second day of the CLE tomorrow.  I'll blog on some of it later.  Had a good visit with fellow law blogger Todd Smith.  For now, I've got a boatload of Tyler cases to look at.

For those joining us from Chiefs v. Raiders coverage ...

As soon as the Fourth of July is over, I'm ready for some football, football, and more football.  There's nothing surprising about that -- lots of people feel the same.  What's surprising to me is that lots of people (OK, not "lots" by NFL standards, but more than you'd think) have room in their hearts for appellate blogs, appellate blogs, and more appellate blogs.  So in the spirit of those game-to-game segues:

For those of you now joining us from D. Todd Smith's Texas Appellate Law Blog, welcome to Tyler Appeals!

As Todd indicated in his post welcoming me to the blogosphere, he was a huge help in getting me off the ground.  He generously shared his time and thoughts on blogging. He put me on to LexBlog, the folks who designed and host what you're looking at right now.  Thanks, Todd. 

While I'm handing out thanks, I also need to thank Don Cruse at his Supreme Court of Texas Blog.  Like Todd, he's been at this longer than I have.  It really helped get my blog going when he alerted his readers to the appellate outpost in the Pineywoods. 

Most of all, thanks to all of our faithful readers.

Welcome to TylerAppeals!

East Texas is a unique place.  So here's a uniquely East Texan blog focusing on our regional court of appeals in Tyler.  My goal is to provide a summary of every case decided by the 12th Court of Appeals.  So far, I've done that for 2008.  (I have, however, omitted cases that were dismissed for procedural or jurisdictional reasons.)  The decisions are categorized on the right.  Once a month or so, I'll devote a good bit of time to a "Case o' the Year Contender."  In those posts, I'll try to put a decision of the Tyler court into a broader context of statewide and nationwide trends.

To the extent possible, I'll keep the posts light and humorous.  By no means do I intend for that tone to cause offense to the Tyler court, the trial courts, the attorneys who practice before them, or the parties to these cases.  There's hard work being done on all sides.  My goal is to give readers an interesting "going forward" take on how the Tyler court's decisions impact the day-to-day practice of law in East Texas.

Now, about the Cotton Belt.  The Tyler court is housed in the Cotton Belt Building.  I don't think I'm speaking out of school to say that it's not much to look at.  But it's ours.  So the picture of the Cotton Belt is front-and-center on this blog -- despite the blog designer's concerns about "aesthetics."  I figured I'd lose credibility with my fellow East Texans if I went with a generic "pretty" building.  On the one year anniversary of this blog I'll let the readers decide if the Cotton Belt stays or goes.  As to the blog designers, I'm glad to put the Cotton Belt issue aside and recommend the folks at LexBlog wholeheartedly.

I hope TylerAppeals will be beneficial to attorneys in the area, across Texas, and even beyond.