Do appellate advocates get the short end of the stick from law schools when it comes to specialized training?

That’s a question that’s on the mind of Stephen Orlofsky, a former federal judge from New Jersey who is co-chair of the appellate practice group at Blank Rome. In July, Rutgers Law School announced that Orlofsky, an honors graduate of the Class of 1974, is giving a generous gift that will allow the school to expand opportunities for appellate instruction. His gift will provide specialized training in appellate practice to students at the law school, although it's yet to be determined whether Rutgers will use the gift to hire a professor or offer a separate appellate advocacy course. Amicus briefs and pro bono work may also be part of the mix.

“Appellate practice is an area of specialty that should be given attention by law schools, just as they’ve given attention to trial advocacy,” Orlofsky said. “I’m not diminishing trial advocacy. It's still an important area of practice, and it's important to train lawyers in trial advocacy, but appellate advocacy is equally important, and in some respects, is even more important, because it determines whether whatever happened in the trial court below is going to remain the law, or whether the law is going to be changed, or the law is going to go in a different direction.”

Among appellate practitioners who spoke about their training, most developed their skills and found a love of appeals by doing appellate work or clerking, but seemed to agree that appellate law doesn’t get as much attention as trial lawyering in law schools or popular culture. Given the power of appellate practice to shape the law, they said, law schools and firms could be well-served to focus on appellate-specific training.

Orlofsky and others say that law schools put more emphasis on trial advocacy because that’s what students are expecting–and those students’ viewpoints are formed in part by the depiction of lawyers on television that show lots of dramatic trials but never talk about going up on appeal.

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To learn more about the Stephen M. Orlofsky Endowed Appellate Advocacy Fund, please click here.

"Are Law Schools Neglecting Appellate Advocacy? Former Judge Pushes for Specialized Training," by Charles Toutant was published in The AM Law Litigation Daily on September 11, 2025.