Trial court experience does not necessarily coincide with the skill required to mount a successful appeal or defend a trial court judgment.

The process itself is different.

On appeal, written arguments predominate and oral arguments are normally question-and-answer sessions concerning legal questions rather than the fact-based pleas presented during a jury trial. Successful appellate attorneys must be skilled at simplifying the complex and doing so persuasively. This is, perhaps, why Judge Laurence Silberman of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia called appellate advocacy “a specialty all to itself” and “no one knows that better than appellate judges themselves.”