Stephen C. Knight, Baydoun & Knight, PLLC
Option 1: sUb-contract model
We have as much or as little contact with the client as you want.
We bill you a flat fee or hourly rate.
You bill your client based on your fee agreement.
Option 2: direct billing
We work directly with you and your client.
We enter into a fee agreement directly with your client.
appellate experience
Stephen C. Knight, Baydoun & Knight, PLLC
Judicial Clerk to Chief Judge Gilbert S. Merritt, Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals
Lead counsel in more than 40 appeals in federal and state appellate courts
Author, Tennessee Chapter, Superceding and Staying Judgments (ABA Publishing)
Honors graduate of The George Washington University Law School and Cornell University
Member of ABA Council of Appellate Lawyers; ABA Appellate Practice Litigation Committee; Appellate Advocacy Committee of the ABA Tort, Trial & Insurance Section; Appellate Practice Committee of the Nashville Bar Association
Former member of Prettyman-Leventhal Inn of Court in Washington, D.C.; Harry Phillips Inn of Court in Nashville, Tennessee; John Marshall American Inn of Court in Williamson County, Tennessee
Other Services
Flat-fee case evaluation to identify promising appellate issues and to assess the likelihood of success on appeal.
Flat-fee briefing review to suggest improvements to your appellate brief.
Why engage appellate counsel?
Trial Lawyers Are Failing On Appeal
Regrettably now, more than half the briefs that are filed are incomprehensible . . . .
Hon. Boyce F. Martin, Jr., Chief Judge of the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, Judges on Briefing: A National Survey, 8 Scribe 1, 19 (2002).
Only 20% of the briefs we receive are “helpful.” Ten percent are “incomprehensible.”
Tennessee Court of Appeals Judge.
Certainly, most advocacy by brief or by oral argument cannot be rated as “good,” let alone “excellent.”
Ruggero J. Aldisert, Third Circuit Court of Appeals Senior Judge, Winning on Appeal (2d ed. 2003).
[A]ppellate judges often complain about the quality of advocacy and hint, none too subtly, about the need for appellate specialists. Judges are obviously looking for ways to make their jobs easier, but there is much to what they say.
Federal Court of Appeals Manual § 1.7 (4th ed.).
[T]he skills needed for effective appellate advocacy are not always found—indeed, perhaps, are rarely found—in good trial lawyers.
Laurence H. Silberman, District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals Judge, Plain Talk on Appellate Advocacy, Litigation, Spring 1994, at 3.
Appellate judges are emphatic in their belief that appellate litigation is a specialized field.
D. Franklin Arey, III, Competent Appellate Advocacy and Continuing Legal Eduction: Fitting the Means to the End, 2 J. App. Prac. & Process 27, 28 (2000).
An appellate attorney can do a better job because he is a specialist. Such a lawyer knows the appellate court's rules, customs, and judges. More important, appellate lawyers know how to write a brief and make an oral argument, and do both efficiently and quickly . . . .
Dennis Owens, New Counsel on Appeal?, Litigation, Spring 1989, at 1.
Not only does an appeal move to a different courthouse, to be heard by different judges, and to be governed by different rules, but it must be packaged in an entirely new way to be effective in this new forum. Appellate specialists may not know anything about the particular case that is to be appealed, but they do know their way around the appellate courts, and they develop skills and habits uniquely well-suited to this environment. They make a crucial difference in many appeals.