Cause of Action with Spencer Pahlke
Oct 6, 2026 · 47 min · 12 segments
One crucial thing that often gets left out of conversations about legal cases is the appeal process. The corporate defense side has a long tradition of attorneys who specialize in appeals. But there…
Deepak GuptaGuest
Spencer PahlkeHost
So I've been very excited to get to speak with you because one thing I love about the plaintiff's practice is how varied it is, not just the different sectors and types of liability theories, but the levels of review.
So can you just set the stage for us? What is appellate practice, and specifically, what's plaintiff's appellate practice?
So the appellate practice part of it is specializing in briefing and arguing appeals.
Um, but actually, like, for most of American history, uh, it wasn't really a defined specialization.
So, like, for most of the twentieth century, cases even that got to the US Supreme Court, the lawyers that handled those cases were the same lawyers that handled them from the very beginning.
But in the late part of the twentieth century and, and more recently, there's been a really distinct specialization of people that are just doing appellate practice, and that specialization started on the defense side, on the corporate side.
And so what we do is we do that same kind of specialized practice on the plaintiff side, on the other side of the V.
As you said, there are lots of niches, and I think typically we think of, you know, people doing different kinds of substantive areas like, you know, personal injury or antitrust-
I do pretty much every kind of plaintiff's case that gets brought, but focusing on the legal issues, the briefing, and the argument on appeal.
On the plaintiff side, we're like, you know, all in this huge boat together and, you know, there are major conferences.
For example, the one we're at right now, AAJ, where just the f- the feeling of all these folks who are rowing in the same direction and sort of fighting the same, you know, for the same interests against the same interests is meaningful to me deeply.
Could you share with us, like, what it means to know that our team now includes folks who specialize on appellate cases on the plaintiff side? You, you mentioned it was just corporate folks who focused on the, the appellate only.
So I've been very excited to get to speak with you because one thing I love about the plaintiff's practice is how varied it is, not just the different sectors and types of liability theories, but the levels of review.
So can you just set the stage for us? What is appellate practice, and specifically, what's plaintiff's appellate practice?
So the appellate practice part of it is specializing in briefing and arguing appeals.
Um, but actually, like, for most of American history, uh, it wasn't really a defined specialization.
So, like, for most of the twentieth century, cases even that got to the US Supreme Court, the lawyers that handled those cases were the same lawyers that handled them from the very beginning.
But in the late part of the twentieth century and, and more recently, there's been a really distinct specialization of people that are just doing appellate practice, and that specialization started on the defense side, on the corporate side.
And so what we do is we do that same kind of specialized practice on the plaintiff side, on the other side of the V.
As you said, there are lots of niches, and I think typically we think of, you know, people doing different kinds of substantive areas like, you know, personal injury or antitrust-
I do pretty much every kind of plaintiff's case that gets brought, but focusing on the legal issues, the briefing, and the argument on appeal.
On the plaintiff side, we're like, you know, all in this huge boat together and, you know, there are major conferences.
For example, the one we're at right now, AAJ, where just the f- the feeling of all these folks who are rowing in the same direction and sort of fighting the same, you know, for the same interests against the same interests is meaningful to me deeply.
Could you share with us, like, what it means to know that our team now includes folks who specialize on appellate cases on the plaintiff side? You, you mentioned it was just corporate folks who focused on the, the appellate only.
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