Texas Appellate Law Podcast

In this episode, hosts Todd Smith and Jody Sanders offer a mid-year check-in on the Texas Supreme Court's new petition-for-review rules. Building on Todd's Appellate Advocate article, A New Era in Texas Supreme Court Practice, they cover what changed between the preliminary and final rules, why the new 1,000-word introduction is "the most important thousand words you're going to draft," and how record-citation and no-more-unbriefed-issues requirements are reshaping petitions. They dig into wheth

"Give yourself time, give yourself options." That refrain runs through this conversation as hosts Jody Sanders and Todd Smith break down what has changed in Texas supersedeas, the procedure for suspending a judgment during appeal. Drawing on Jody's Appellate Advocate article, "The Name's Bonds, Supersedeas Bonds," they cover the four ways to supersede a Texas judgment, how the required amount gets calculated, and the proof a debtor needs to rely on net worth or substantial economic harm. They fo

The real AI risk isn't hallucinations—it's not using AI at all. That's the counterintuitive argument from Ross Guberman, founder and CEO of BriefCatch, who tells hosts Todd Smith and Jody Sanders that lawyers ignoring AI may be approaching malpractice territory. BriefCatch now contains roughly 16,000 editing rules, up from about 10,000 in 2021. Ross introduces two new BriefCatch Next products: RealityCheck, an anti-hallucination tool that uses a red-yellow-green system to verify case citations a

Wallace Jefferson, former Chief Justice of the Texas Supreme Court and newly installed President of the American Law Institute (ALI), joins Jody Sanders and Todd Smith for a wide-ranging conversation on appellate practice, judicial leadership, and legacy. Chief Justice Jefferson, a partner at Alexander Dubose & Jefferson LLP, discusses ALI's mission to modernize the law, the U.S. Supreme Court argument he made just eight years out of law school, and his discovery that an ancestor, Shedrick Willi

Opposing counsel once called Chris Schandevel a "brief-writing ninja." He took it as a compliment. Years later, as he considered ways to add value to attorneys coming up behind him, Chris channeled that nickname into a side job: Brief-Writing Ninja, his training platform to help lawyers improve their writing skills. Why? Because good writing is good writing—whether you’re writing for a court or a high school essay. In this conversation with hosts Todd Smith and Jody Sanders, Chris shares practic

“We have just anything you could think of,” Amy Small says of the Texas State Law Library, where she is executive director. Open to all—no attorney license required—the library serves everyday Texans and the Supreme Court alike. In this episode, hosts Jody Sanders and Todd Smith invite Amy to unpack the library’s often-overlooked resources: remote access to HeinOnline, historical statutes back to 1879, eBooks with persistent annotations, Westlaw and Lexis access on the library’s public computers