Survey: What kind of appellate arguments work best?

From both the Legal Writing Institute and Moot Court Advisors listservs:

Announcing the 2008 Persuasion Study

What kinds of arguments do appellate judges find most persuasive?

While there is much anecdotal evidence on this question, there is very little empirical research as to what kinds of arguments resonate with appellate judges. A nationwide survey undertaken by a professor at a major Midwestern law school seeks to fill that gap.

The 2008 Persuasion Study will ask volunteer appellate judges, appellate law clerks, appellate practitioners and legal writing professors to review two short, one-issue briefs, both arguing the same side of a fictional case in a fictional jurisdiction. The two briefs will be carefully written to make the best possible argument available, but using different persuasive approaches to the case. Participants will then be asked to select which of the two briefs they found more persuasive.

The survey seeks to include not only appellate judges, but appellate law clerks, practitioners and legal writing professors, to see if there is any discernible difference between these groups. Do appellate judges and appellate law clerks respond in the same way to the same briefs? Are appellate lawyers, as a group, attracted to briefs that judges aren’t? Are legal writing professors teaching persuasive techniques that judges do not respond to?

The success of this survey depends in part on the size of the test population. The larger the sample of each respondent pool, the more likely it is that the test will yield results that accurately measure the attitudes of each group. Please consider volunteering for this study.

If you would like to participate, you may sign up for the study by visiting this site:

http://tinyurl.com/persuasionstudyregistration

You will then be asked to provide your name, e-mail address and type of participant (judge, clerk, practitioner or professor). This information will be used ONLY by the Survey Administrator (a research assistant, not the principal investigator) for the purpose of randomly assigning and distributing briefs and a brief summary of the appellate record for the survey. The Survey Administrator will not disclose the identity of the participants at any time to the principal investigator.

After the survey launches, the Survey Administrator will e-mail to all participants the summary of the appellate record, two randomly-assigned briefs, and a Participant Number. Participants will then review the record as necessary, read the two briefs, and decide which of the two they found more persuasive. Participants will then be directed to the survey website, where they will fill in a short questionnaire using only their Participant Number. The questionnaire will gather a small amount of demographic data (including things like level of court served on, approximate length of time in the current employment position, etc.) and then will be asked simply to report which brief the participant found to be more persuasive.

All responses will be held in strict confidence. The principal investigator will never have access to the list of participants or their e-mail addresses, and that list will never be shared with anybody else; only the Survey Administrator will have access to it for the purpose of distributing survey materials.

The registration site is open now; participant registration will continue until December 15, 2008. Survey materials will then be distributed in early January, and the survey will close in mid-February.

Please volunteer to participate in this important study. The larger the pool of participants, the more likely the results will be representative of each participating group.

If you have further questions, you can contact the Survey Administrator at appellatebriefresearch@yahoo.com.

Sounds interesting. I'm looking forward to participating, and looking even more forward to the results!