Effective appellate advocacy requires a mastery of the facts and the substantive law, but neither is sufficient without careful judgments about what will persuade a court to rule for our client.  Every day, the appellate litigators at Ropes & Gray make those critical assessments in federal and state appeals courts across the nation, gauging not only where the law has been, but where it is going.

Our appellate work arises both when we are retained solely for the appeal, and in cases we have litigated in the trial court. At trial we are vigilant in preserving appellate issues and building a record that will hold up on appeal.

Representative Experience

• We persuaded the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit to order the release of Census data reflecting the "undercount" of minority and disadvantaged communities.
• Our lawyers won an order from the Appellate Division of the California Superior Court that a state wine regulation statute was preempted by the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution.
• We earned affirmance by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit of a judgment that property insurers were not liable to pay for asbestos removal in numerous structures, including airports, bridges and tunnels.
• We successfully defended before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit a "cash balance pension plan" against a claim under the anti-discrimination provisions of ERISA and the Age Discrimination in Employment Act.
• Before the U.S. Supreme Court, we presented a First Amendment challenge to a Louisiana state limitation on political contributions, and an Indian tribe’s claim to compensation from the federal government for breach of fiduciary duty.

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