Appellate Litigation Clinic helps bring complex cases to justice
Students pour themselves into federal appeals that otherwise might not get proper attention or legal representation
Appellate Litigation Clinic alumni Lucas Mears JD ’24, Margaret Kruzner JD '24, and Matt Queen JD '24
In an overburdened court system, the claims in appeals might be buried or overlooked — especially when parties are representing themselves.
It’s that type of case where Duke Law School’s Appellate Litigation Clinic does its best work.
Unlike private lawyers, the clinic’s student-attorneys are less limited by time or money and can pour hundreds of hours into complex cases appointed by federal appeals courts. They get unmatched experience in high-level appellate litigation while assisting clients who cannot afford quality counsel and furnishing courts with the information they need to serve justice.
“Even the very best, most careful judges have limits to how much they can make sense of without help from advocates,” said Clinic Director Richard Katskee.
“The courts therefore like to appoint complex, record-intensive cases to law-school clinics, because they know that the students will absolutely throw themselves into the work and have experienced appellate lawyers as supervisors. So judges will get a good product to help them make their decision. And for clients, so often they’ve never had anybody listen to them or take them seriously. I’ve watched my students do that, and it’s incredible. It’s lawyering at its best.”
One of Duke Law’s 12 clinics, the Appellate Litigation Clinic provides intensive training in all aspects of litigation. Working in small teams over two semesters, students handle a federal appeal from beginning to end — reading trial court records, researching law and procedure, deciding on issues to appeal, meeting with clients, developing legal strategy, drafting documents, and honing their oral advocacy skills to argue against far more experienced lawyers. They’re also responsible for case management — a critical skill when a client’s freedom, safety, or well-being can turn on a missed court deadline.
“I try to let the students become the legal professionals. They do the strategizing, talk with the client, figure out the legal issues, and decide together how to divide up the work and get it done on time,” said Katskee, a Supreme Court and appellate lawyer before joining Duke Law.
“I think that they find it a really powerful and exciting thing to have not just a faceless client but a real person who’s depending on them.”
The exposure to substantive and procedural law was intellectually stimulating, said Zoe Terner Rosen JD ’25, a judicial clerk. Equally important were the insights students gained into how judges and court personnel look at cases presented to them, and the tight bonds teams formed during long hours poring over documents and hashing out legal briefs and memos.
“I learned how to be a strong member of a team and how to offer my best contributions,” Rosen said. “It was our thing that we were doing together, and we cared about our client and about doing the best by them that we could. I couldn’t ask for anything more.”
Stepping into the lawyer role
The clinic serves as appointed counsel for cases filed in the U.S. Courts of Appeals, typically from the Third, Fourth, and D.C. Circuits. In one case, a student team successfully overcame a procedural bar to allow a client’s habeas petition to be considered and decided on the merits. To do so, the students had to delve into highly technical legal procedures, statutes, and rules of court to argue that the court should hear the case.
“Procedural bars—the mechanisms that the courts use to decline to hear cases—are incredibly rigid and rigorous, and you almost never get beyond them,” Katskee explained.
Margaret Kruzner JD ’24, a litigation associate at Kirkland & Ellis who argued the case before a Fourth Circuit panel, called the experience “an inspirational way to start my career as an appellate litigator.”
The clinic has worked on several cases involving clients’ constitutional right to medical and mental health care while confined in prison and psychiatric facilities. In one case, Katskee says, a client was confined to a tiny group cell for 11 months with no access to exercise.
In another, he says, a client was denied the recommended treatment for his severe psychiatric disorder, placed in four-point restraints, and held in seclusion for more than a year and a half at a Virginia psychiatric hospital. That case was appointed to the clinic after the client, representing himself, sued the hospital and lost his case in the trial court.
Moksh Gudala JD ’24, an associate at Latham & Watkins, said the case highlighted systemic problems with access to justice for clients who can’t afford legal counsel. Jake Sherman JD ’24, a litigation associate at Gibson Dunn, called the work “the best experience of law school” and one that helped prepare him for the daily practice of being an attorney.
Students also partnered with the Wrongful Convictions Clinic to try to unseal documents in a nearly 40-year-old conviction. While they didn’t get the records released, the North Carolina Court of Appeals granted review of the case, Katskee says. “The hope was that by working with the Wrongful Convictions Clinic, we could shine a light on the prosecutorial misconduct in the case, to encourage the court to give the matter a careful look.”
While Katskee emphasizes to the students that winning can’t be the objective of their work, and that they should expect to lose most of their cases, the clinic has won both cases in which verdicts have been delivered.
“What is jaw-dropping to me is the way the students invest themselves, and the way that it produces incredible work that is far beyond what you would ever think a third-year law student could do,” Katskee said.
“I'm incredibly proud of their winning, yes, but also of the quality of their work and the way that they serve our clients, who realize that they have somebody on their side who’s going to put in the time and effort to do the best job possible, however it turns out.”
"Every student really invested and realized that if they didn't learn the case and make sense of it, then there would be a client who wouldn't be getting good representation. Like the best professionals, they were not going to let that happen. And like the best students, they were so enthusiastic that they had endless energy."