How to Prepare for an Appeal Hearing

Added: 2026-05-27

[00:00:00]Before we came on air, you spoke about the importance of working backwards.

[00:00:06]Yes.

[00:00:07]>> Right? Could you just please just expand on that? You need to know, even before you start your prep- preparation of a case, you need to think about what am I going to say to the judge at the end of this case, if all goes well. Because I haven't got a crystal ball, I can't necessarily assume that all the witnesses are going to come up to to to prove, and I've got to have a degree of flexibility, but I need to know what I'm going to put in my final speech, or in my speech if it's an appeal. So, you work backwards.

[00:00:38]That's the point that you want to reach.

[00:00:41]You know where you're going, and you need to know how to get there. So, you say to yourself, "What do I need to establish?" When you've got your list of what you need to establish, "How best can I establish it? Do I need to call a witness, or is it common ground? Do I get this piece of information from my own witness, or do I take the gamble of getting it from the other side's witness?"

[00:01:01]Or is there a document that helps me?

[00:01:03]And then you look at the questions that you formulated, and you say, "Do I really need to ask that second or that fourth question in order to get to where I want to be, or can I do it more economically?"