WashULaw’s Appellate Clinic

Anna Donovan: Hi, and welcome back to Applying Yourself, a law school admissions podcast from Washington University School of Law, produced by the JD admissions office at WashU Law. Today, we are speaking with Steve Alagna, who is interim director of the Appellate Advocacy Clinic and a lecturer in law at WashU Law. So welcome, Steve.

Steve Alagna: Thank you.

Anna Donovan: Yeah, just to get started, tell us a little bit about your career background and what’s brought you to this point of being director in the Aate Clinic.

Steve Alagna: Yeah, thanks. Thanks for having me. So I moved to St. Louis to go to WashU Law School, so I’m an alum of the school. After I graduated, I stuck around here and worked at a law firm here in town, Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner, doing commercial litigation. I did a lot of like class action work, some appellate work, was there for a few years, and then actually went away for a year to Charlotte, North Carolina, where I did a one-year clerkship for a federal judge there who sits on the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals.

And after that clerkship, moved back here and started this gig at WashU teaching the Appellate Clinic and legal practice. So it’s really good to be back in St. Louis, back at WashU. So yeah, it’s good to be here.

Anna Donovan: Yeah, excellent. And, you know, part of the work that you got to do at Bryan Cave, I know you were involved in doing some pro bono work as well, and you were also involved with HRC here locally. Do you want to talk a little bit about that work that you got to do?

Steve Alagna: Yeah, for sure. Yeah, one of the things I really liked about working at Bryan Cave, which is like a corporate law firm, a full-service like business law firm, is it also had a really robust pro bono practice. And I really enjoyed getting to work on those cases for nonprofits or for people who might not otherwise be able to afford the kind of legal representation that a firm like Bryan Cave would normally charge its corporate clients.

And so those cases were really great experience. I took my first, like, deposition in a pro bono case with the firm and great opportunities to build skills while also, you know, working on important cases and doing some public good, hopefully.

And yeah, related to that, I’m a volunteer with the Human Rights Campaign, which is a big LGBTQ+ advocacy organization nationwide. And so that’s always been something that’s personally important to me. I was grateful to be able to find some opportunities when I was at Bryan Cave to do some pro bono work in that space, including helping some transgender clients update their identity documents, get legal name changes, stuff like that, working with HRC, some other nonprofits in like an amicus capacity when they wanted to weigh in as a friend of the court in some high-stakes important litigation.

So, yeah, it was cool to be able to have those opportunities when I was at the firm. And now it’s been kind of a nice throughline to be able to try to kind of continue some of that work in that space with the Appellate Clinic here at the law school. So that’s been really cool.

Anna Donovan: Awesome. Will you explain, and for anyone who maybe has listened to our podcast, I refer to our millions of listeners. Will you please explain to our millions of listeners what is the Appellate Clinic? What is appellate work? Sometimes I think I have to remind myself that not everyone knows everything about law school and how it all works, but what you actually do and what your students do in the clinic.

Steve  Alagna: Yeah, for sure. So, in general, the law school’s clinical opportunities are available to second and third-year law students. And we work on real cases in our clinics. So, in our Appellate Clinic, we are handling all kinds of appeals. And so that means, typically, someone has filed some kind of lawsuit at a trial court level, like a federal district court, and lost, and now the case is up on appeal, and that’s where we jump in.

So it’s kind of like a procedural specialty where we take on cases once they’re at the appellate level. And so what that work looks like is working with that client. A lot of times they were pro se or they didn’t have counsel at the trial court level. And so sometimes we’ll get appointed or assigned to be their counsel for their appeal. And so we’ll talk with our client. Sometimes it’s a challenge just to locate the client, which has been something we’ve been figuring out.

But once we make contact with our client, we talk about our appellate strategy that we develop by doing legal research, really diving into the record, all of the documents that have been filed in the case, and looking at what the lower court’s decision was. And then we try to identify some arguments about how we can undo that loss that our client suffered in the lower court by trying to convince the appellate court that the lower court did something wrong.

So we research and then we write a brief, and then typically the other side writes a brief, and then we write a reply brief, and then hopefully we get an opportunity to present oral arguments to the court. So then we actually go to the courtroom and we suit up, and typically before a panel of three judges and we’ll try to argue the case orally and ask the court of appeals to undo what the district court did below. So, that’s in a nutshell most of what our appellate clinic does.

We also do some kind of outside projects that have like an appellate flavor. So we also work on amicus briefs. So we’re not a party litigating the appeal, but there might be a high-profile case where we write a brief for maybe an organization or someone who cares about the outcome of the case, even if they’re not a party to actually litigating the case. And those are always cool opportunities to figure out the different implications of important appeals and how they kind of reverberate out with ripple effects throughout the community and then to really try to write a brief that’s in the unique voice of that amicus client.

So those are really cool opportunities too. Right now we’re working on one for a prominent LGBTQ+ advocacy organization in an Eighth Circuit appeal about Arkansas’ state law that bans gender-affirming healthcare. So, that’s been a really meaningful project for our clinic to work on.

Anna Donovan: Awesome. For your students that you have this is your first semester, your current 2Ls and 3Ls, what are they interested in doing? You know, I think a lot of our incoming, you know when Naomi and I talk to prospective students and they’re like, oh, I’m interested in clinics, and maybe they have a few they’re interested in, but like for the students that you currently have what are their kind of like career trajectories that they think that they want to pursue, and sort of do you feel like the appellate clinic kind of aligns with that or are they kind of just looking to build skills kind of in that sort of like writing arena?

Steve  Alagna: Yeah, for sure. So the group of students that I have now, they’re all third-year law students. And I would say I think most of them plan to go to a private kind of corporate firm, kind of like where I used to work, after graduating. A few of them are interested in like public interest work, so whether that’s for a nonprofit or a more kind of like mission-oriented community group, or with the government. And a few of them also are pursuing clerkships.

So some of them have clerkships lined up with a federal district court, and I know a few are looking at federal appellate clerkships as well. So, I do think the students who tend to kind of like self-select for the Appellate Clinic might be a little more likely to pursue the clerkship route than maybe some of our other clinics, just because appellate practice is, you know, an appellate clerkship really is like appellate practice. It’s all about that. So that makes sense. But otherwise, I mean, I think my students now are kind of all over the map in terms of what their post-graduation plans are, and that’s been kind of cool too.

Anna Donovan: Absolutely. And then what is the day-to-day clinic experience like for students?

Steve Alagna: Yeah, so once a week, we meet for a seminar, and there will be kind of like a different topic of appellate practice that we cover each week. And so one week, it’s like, how do we communicate with our clients and with court personnel and with opposing counsel? And another week might be, what are some tips and tools for writing opening briefs from an appellant? And what are some good rhetorical techniques and good just kind of advanced writing practices we can be using in that kind of exercise?

So that’s what our seminar looks like week to week. But outside of that seminar, the clinic students work in teams around cases. So it’s typically teams of two, three, or four students who really work on a case, and they’re the ones really primarily diving into the legal research, diving into the record from the district court below, and coming up with, you know, what a good strategy for us to pursue on appeal might be.

And so then I meet with each working team once a week for an hour, and we have like a kind of supervisory meeting where I’m making sure, you know, our approach continues to make sense, and we identify what next steps we should follow. And then other than that, really, the clinic students are kind of just putting in the time to dive into those documents and that research and draft briefs, and it’s kind of an iterative process where we go back and forth between the student teams and me.

And so that’s kind of what we’re doing now with a couple of our cases. We’re getting ready to file our opening briefs. And that’s been really exciting to just see how the briefs are taking shape and starting to look really strong. And I think this kind of back and forth process has been really good and has helped us feel like we’re really making the best arguments we can for our clients.

Anna Donovan: Absolutely. And what types of cases are students working on? I know there’s probably not a lot you can say about current cases, but, like, yeah, what are the types of issues? And I know you gave one example earlier.

Steve Alagna: Yeah, so right now, most of our cases are civil rights cases. They’re called, like, Section 1983 federal civil rights cases. And so a lot of them involve people who were incarcerated, and one is like an excessive force case where it really looks like our client was subjected to some unreasonable, excessive force at the hands of a correctional officer, unfortunately. And so he filed a lawsuit about that.

And now our task on appeal is arguing that he has put forth evidence that really supports that claim that a jury could look at and say, yeah, I think you have proven a civil rights violation here. So that’s one case. Another case similarly involves another person who was incarcerated who was challenging the prison’s mail policy, which limited, like, the number of pages they could get from a loved one outside the prison in the mail and stuff like that. And then as he challenged that, faced some kind of repercussions and some retaliations from correctional officers. And so challenging that as a First Amendment violation is another one of our cases.

So right now, it’s like kind of those civil rights cases is what we’re working on in that vein. In the past, I know the clinic has also handled habeas cases or people who are collaterally challenging their convictions and saying there was something unconstitutional about their conviction or their trial or their sentence or something like that. So I think that’s a typical kind of case for our clinic to work on as well.

Anna Donovan: And then how do you find, like, how do these clients come about? Like, how do you, and I know you spoke earlier that it’s hard to find the actual client, but how do you find the cases to work on?

Steve Alagna: Yeah, so a lot of times we get appointed or assigned to the cases by the court. So the Court of Appeals will reach out to us and say, we have this case, would your clinic have the bandwidth to take this on pro bono? And we usually say yes. And so, so we get cases. Right now we have cases from the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals, which is based here in St. Louis. We’re working on a couple of cases in the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, which is based in Richmond, Virginia, but that’s where I clerked last year. So I have some connections.

And then my predecessor who directed the clinic here, Professor Harawa, before me, was also a Fourth Circuit clerk, so the clinic’s had kind of a nice pipeline of cases to the Fourth Circuit for a while. But yeah, so typically it comes directly from courts of appeals. Actually, the clerk of the court of the Tenth Circuit, which is based in Denver, is a WashU law alum, which is cool. So we’re hoping to kind of foster that relationship too and get some Tenth Circuit appeals that we can work on as well.

Anna Donovan: Awesome. I feel like for potentially your clinic specifically, you know, the timeline of the cases, like, may not be neatly wrapped up in the kind of semester kind of bracketed timeframe. How, I guess, do you all and the students sort of manage stuff that may be ongoing kind of past, like, sort of their time in the clinic?

Steve Alagna: Yeah, that’s a great question. That’s something we’re kind of… We’re kind of figuring out right now, but it is tricky, right? Because appeals, I mentioned the multiple steps of like, it takes us time just to get up to speed with what happened in the case, and then it takes us time to research and draft an opening brief. Then the other side gets to write a brief. Sometimes the other side asks a bunch, asks for a bunch of extensions to file their brief, and so that makes the case last longer too. And you know, that might not fit neatly within kind of our academic semester.

So I think what’s going to happen for a few of our cases is, I think it will work out that our fall semester clinic students will get to write the opening brief, which is great because they get to really dig in and, and build our arguments from scratch. And then the timing should work out that our spring semester clinic students can then kind of pick up the case again, get up to speed with what’s going on and get an opportunity to draft our reply brief after the other side files their brief. And then hopefully we’ll get calendared for oral argument and in one or more of our cases.

And then depending on when that’s scheduled, it might be a spring semester student, or if it gets pushed to even further to the next academic year, then it might be one of those students who gets that opportunity. So a lot of it is kind of just going with the flow and there’s only so much of the timing we can control, but so yeah, that is a part of the clinic that requires some flexibility.

Anna Donovan: Absolutely. Fabulous. Yeah. Awesome. So this is a real hard pivot away from the clinic, but you also teach, I think we touched on this, a 1L section of legal practice. And I, you know, as someone who did not go to law school, have come to realize the importance of legal writing. But do you want to say a little bit about what is legal practice here and what do you, I guess, teach and work with your first year students on?

Steve Alagna: Yeah, absolutely. And this, this is great timing because the first semester of legal practice has just wrapped up and now they have, like, the only thing left is for them to draft their research memos, and those are due in the next couple days. But, yeah, so legal practice is a required course for our first-year JD students, and we really focus on, like, the skills of being a practitioner in legal workplaces. So a huge chunk of that is legal writing, which has just kind of its own weird conventions that are different from probably all other forms of writing.

It’s a learning curve for all of us, and it’s a lifelong skill for people in practice even. So the course is really designed to just, like, introduce legal writing to first-year law students, and part of that is starting to think like a lawyer and how you kind of identify legal issues and break down requirements of legal claims into elements and just kind of think analytically like that and communicate that as clearly as you can in a written work product and also in like an oral presentation modality as well.

So the fall semester is all about just kind of communicating things with clarity, trying to predict what a court might do, we call it the more objective side where we’re just saying, look, here’s what we think a court is most likely to come out on this issue. And then in the spring semester, we’ll switch to a more kind of like persuasive mode where we really get into the advocacy of like, OK, now we’re presenting documents and briefs to the court on behalf of our clients. So we’re making arguments, not just predictions of what we think will happen, but arguments of what we think should happen.

And so just kind of that progression of writing with clarity into writing in a persuasive mode is a big thing of what we talk about, which is cool. And then there are also just those kind of like practice norms of, they apply to a lot of workplaces, like, read your emails carefully and show up early, but not too early. It’s a thing and just kind of those kinds of norms are things that we talk about as well.

Anna Donovan: Life skills. Everyone needs to know or needs reminders of and you know, definitely in this profession. That is exciting. How do they, this is, I guess, my own personal question, pick their topics for, you said that they’re writing a memo.

Steve Alagna: Yes.

Anna Donovan: Yeah.

Steve Alagna: So they actually get like a problem kind of, so we like make up a fake story about a fake client.

Anna Donovan: Yeah.

Steve Alagna: And we’re like, here’s your client, and here’s all this information. So they watched a video of like an interview between, like, a senior attorney at our fake law firm, and this fake client. And so they get all the information through that interview of what happened, and then there’s a memo that they get that says, I’d like you to look into this legal question about this kind of claim and, and research this element and tell us what you think a court is likely to decide, in our case.

And that’s pretty much it. And then they like go out and they research all the case law, and try to put together a good legal analysis and…

Anna Donovan: Yeah, fantastic. This is probably a uh a surprise question on you, but uh for the for the wrapping up of our podcast, but we like to ask all of our guests something about St. Louis. I know you’re a transplant. I mean, you’re not from too far away in Kansas City, but if you want to say something that you love about St. Louis, it could be an event, it could be seasonal, it could be something random, it could be a restaurant you like, just, you know, we’re always trying to sell our beautiful city.

Steve Alagna: Yeah, I love that. It’s hard for me not to give, like, a multi-part answer. I’m just gonna give a multi-part answer.

Anna Donovan: Okay, great.

Steve Alagna: Okay, so, I am a big fan of, like, our two big city parks, Forest Park, and I live right by Tower Grove Park, and I think there’s really beautiful green spaces, unique to St. Louis. Like there are a lot of cool city parks out there, but I think there’s something really special about those two parks, and so I’m really grateful that we have those.

And then the other part of my multi-part answer is, so on every Thursday for my 1Ls, I try to give, like, a little fun St. Louis activity or fun thing going on for them to do. So since our last class of the semester was yesterday, I kind of dumped a whole bunch of stuff on them of, like, fun holiday goings-on around here. So some of the highlights from that were the Cherokee Print Bazaar on Cherokee Street.

Anna Donovan: My favorite event of the year.

Steve Alagna: Yeah. It’s always really cool to get just, like, cool art prints from local artists, and it’s a fun vibe, fun atmosphere. Also a fan of, like, the holiday light things that go on both at the Anheuser-Busch Brewery and also just in different neighborhoods around here. So those are really cool. And then I’m also going to make a plug for the Nutcracker. St. Louis Ballet.

Anna Donovan: Yes, you absolutely should to all of our millions of listeners. Absolutely.

Steve AlagnaVElonia: So my partner dances for the St. Louis Ballet, and their Nutcracker production is always really fantastic. So great holiday favorite that we have here in town.

Anna Donovan: Everyone come see the St. Louis Ballet. It’s so accessible, very affordable. It’s just so wonderful. And highly skilled.

Steve AlagnaVElonia: Yes.

Anna Donovan: This is wonderful. Well, thank you so much, Steve, for joining us.

Steve Alagna: Thank you for having me. This has been great.

Anna Donovan: Yeah, fantastic. Well, I guess signing off, Naomi.

Naomi Blanton: Yeah, signing off, and if you have any questions for our office, you can always email us at applylaw@wooster.edu. Or suggestions or feedback for the podcast, we would love to hear what you’d like us to talk about. But thank you, Steve, and thank you, Anna.

Anna Donovan: All right, guys. Bye.

Naomi Blanton: Bye.