Announcer  0:03 
Music. Welcome to the California appellate podcast, a discussion of timely trial tips and the latest cases and news coming from the California Court of Appeal and the California Supreme Court. And now your hosts, Tim Kowal and Jeff Lewis, welcome everyone. I am Jeff Lewis

Tim Kowal  0:18 
and I'm Tim Kowal. Wall Now Jeff, as you know, let's, let's get right into it today. One of the recurring themes on this podcast is access to justice, and while we primarily focus on civil appeals, the tip of the spear on many important rights is in the criminal law context. And so you know, for example, there's a constitutional right to effective assistance of counsel. But as we've been made aware recently, there is a shortage of affected, effective appellate counsel in many criminal cases, and that's why we're glad at the opportunity to to have our two guests with us today, Jennifer Hanson and Jennifer Peabody. Peabody two attorneys with the California appellate Project Los Angeles providing criminal appellate services to indigent defendants. And then I think, Jeff, you'll be able to relate some of your experience and getting some much needed appellate experience in our conversation. By way of brief introduction, Jennifer Hanson is a cap la staff attorney and a former member of several appointed appellate panels. And we'll describe Jennifer will describe what that means. She was appointed recently to the criminal jury instructions Advisory Committee. She frequently provides training to trial and appellate criminal defense attorneys on California's many new re sentencing laws. Jennifer Peabody is a senior staff attorney at the California appellate project. Prior to joining cap LA, Jennifer was in private practice for 22 years where she's been she handled criminal appointed appeals from many of the California appellate districts, and she's been Council of record in more than 400 Criminal Appeals before the Board of Appeals. So Jennifer and Jennifer, welcome to the podcast. Thanks so much for joining us.

Jennifer Peabody  1:58 
Thank you for having us. We're excited to be here. Let's talk a little

Tim Kowal  2:01  
bit about your background so we get to know you a little bit more. Is both of both of your backgrounds exclusively in criminal work.

Jennifer Peabody  2:09 
Yes. I mean, I right out of law school, I joined a small, boutique appellate firm, some minor trial work, but mainly appeals, Criminal Appeals, petitions for writ of habeas corpus in the state and federal court, and also some mental health civil commitment appeals. That is what I've done the whole time. Never completed a full trial, always done appeals. Went into private practice on my own where, like you said, Tim, I handled about 400 appeals, all felony appeals, and then I came to cap la as a staff attorney in 2020 and what

Tim Kowal  2:43  
about you, Jen, what's your what's your background? Is it exclusively criminal work?

Jennifer Hansen  2:48  
It is. And initially I wanted to be a public defender, and I graduated from law school in 2006 and I did an internship with the public defender's office in LA and in Alameda County. But it was a time when it was really hard to get jobs with the county defender offices. And so I actually went and worked at an appellate law firm as well a woman who did a Pell appeals and trials. And I said, Hey, wait a minute. You know, this is a pretty cool way to be involved in the process. And I found that my personality was better suited to the appellate work anyway, and so I ended up sticking with appeals, and I find it to be really fulfilling. I really love the work. I like working with the clients, and I kind of like the posture a little better, you know, on the trial side, at least in our area, you know, it's like you're having to oftentimes, you know, help people through this crisis and the worst thing in their lives, and it's really stressful. And I sort of, like in the appeals, it's more distant, you know, the person's already sort of figured out what. You know, they've either been found guilty or they, you know, they know what it's going to happen. And so I'm not necessarily delivering the bad news. I'm just here to help and see if I can try to see if there was an error, or make sure all they had all their constitutional protections. And so I prefer this role of research and writing. I worked actually the same boutique firm where Jennifer worked for several years, and then I also went out on my own, and I've also been involved in training a lot of trial attorneys. My husband is public defender, and you know, there's not often a lot of crossover between the two worlds, the appellate world and the trial world. And it's been pretty cool the last couple years with all these new laws that have come out, I've been doing trainings for trial lawyers to help them make better records when they go up on an appeal. So I've come to cap also, and we have a lot of cases, and we're really excited to talk to you about opportunities for new people to get involved in this work?

Tim Kowal  4:41  
Well, yeah, let's, let's jump right into why we decided to have this conversation today. And you have both been talking a lot about how there is a shortage of experience appellate counsel, or just just willing counsel to jump in and handle some of these indigent criminal appeals. Either. Bono or low Bono. Can you give us a snapshot of that crisis and how it's come into has it become more acute? Recently, I assume there's always been a struggle in trying to get lawyers to work for free or work for a reduced rate. But has that problem become more acute? Recently,

Jennifer Peabody  5:15 
yes, the problem is gotten a lot worse over the last decade and july 2013 there were 927 attorneys statewide that would take these cases. As of January 2024 there are only 637 attorneys taking these cases, and of that, 180 have taken two or fewer cases over the last two years. So really, that only that leaves about 457 attorneys statewide to handle these appointed appeals, because, in large part because of the new laws, and also just the increase in prosecutions statewide, we have over 9000 cases that need appointed counsel. It's not just criminal it's juvenile delinquency, it's juvenile dependency, and it's civil commitment appeals, and so those numbers just don't really add up, right? I mean, 457 attorneys to take 9000 cases. Over 9000 cases is a real constitutional crisis in you know, we're at the situation where, you know, we have huge backlogs of cases that need appointed attorneys, and in cap LA, we have about 700 cases currently that need attorneys, and so the numbers don't work.

Jeff Lewis  6:33 
Explain a little bit about the projects, what they do, who the what the assisted cases are, and what the staff attorneys do, and how new attorneys can, or new to the project attorneys can get on board and get on these cases.

Jennifer Hansen  6:47 
I'll jump in on that. So I don't know how much people know about appointed appeal, so maybe we should just get into that. Yeah, I think most people know from TV or from experiences that in the trial, you know, if you are arrested and you are going to trial and you can't afford an attorney, then you have the public defender. In California has a county based system where attorneys are provided through your county, and so everybody gets the trial attorney paid for with the public defender's office or some equivalent in their county. When in the case, if you're convicted and you file a notice of appeal that goes up to the second level, the Court of Appeal. We don't have a statewide public defender that deals with non capital cases. There is an Office of the State Public Defender, which is a very small office up in Sacramento and in Oakland, and they handle death penalty appeals. But for all of the other felonies, anything from, you know, stealing a car to killing somebody, you don't have a state public defender's office that's going to have an army of attorneys to represent people. There's the Attorney General's Office, which is on the other side and defends the convictions. But we don't have a parallel state agency. Apparently, the Office of the State Public Defender in the 80s used to do more non capital work. But there was a change in the governor's office, and they cut the budget, and so they went to this model where now it's outsourced to independent contractors. And so rather than just having random people show up at the clerk's office and say, Hey, I'd like to take a case and, you know, maybe getting a car theft or maybe getting a murder, they came up with, the state came up with, I think the state bar actually sort of came up with this model of having a resource nonprofit in each of the appellate districts. So you have called appellate defenders Adi, which is over the fourth district, covering San Bernardino, San Diego, Orange County. You have this California appellate project, which is our office. We cover the second district, which is Los Angeles, Ventura San Luis, Obispo, Santa Barbara. You have the first district up north. You have sixth district in San Jose. And then you have, they have stood up and Sadaf, which we call it, first district appellate project, six district appellate project. And then in Sacramento, there is the central California appellate project covering the third and the fifth. So we're all sort of like little tubs in each of the appellate districts, and we operate as quality control and assistance to the courts. So if they do get an appeal for a murder, they refer the case to us, and someone in our office will say, okay, who's qualified to take a murder at this point? And we maintain lists of attorneys who have applied to be on our panels and who are qualified to take certain types of cases, and we basically match the cases, and we send a name back to the Court of Appeal and say, This is a person that is eligible and willing to be acquainted on this case, and so then they produce an order, and then that person is the attorney. We're not appointed on the case. We are just sort of an intermediary that connects the Court of Appeal and the attorney, but then we're available as a resource to help the person to read drafts of briefs. Our office provides training. We monitor. The quality we're served on all the briefs. So if we start to see that someone's quality is falling off, or it's a really serious case and they're, you know, not filing a brief on time, we can follow up with the attorney. Yeah, and we provide, there's a lot of stuff. We'll talk through the whole conversation about all the services we provide, but that's basically the projects. Are a nonprofit, little appellate resource hubs within the districts, and we maintain these lists of qualified attorneys eligible to take criminal cases.

Tim Kowal  10:26 
Okay, so each region has has its own project, and then when the within each project, does each project have multiple panels? It sounds like that was the two parts of the of the structure is there's a projects, one project per region. And then are there various panels within each project?

Jennifer Peabody  10:44 
Each panel, each project, has their own list of qualified attorneys, but there is a lot of overlap amongst the projects. We share a lot of the same attorneys, especially the higher level attorneys, the attorneys who are qualified and experienced to do the most serious cases we have, the life cases we we share, we share most attorneys. So that number I gave you earlier, of the 457 is statewide on the California appellate project. Los Angeles. We have about 350 of those attorneys. But more and more more attorneys are applying to all the panels, and they're all just really tapped out, and there just aren't enough. So,

Jennifer Hansen  11:29 
and we do have separate we do have separate panels. You know, some people only take criminal cases, some people only take, you know, mental health civil commitment cases. Some people only take dependency cases. So there are different lists, but some people you know depends on what people are interested in, where they're where their expertise lies.

Tim Kowal  11:47 
Can you give us a sense of of how important it is for there to be more more appellate representation on these on these panels and the projects I know in the in the civil context, the right of appeal is statutory, but there's not a, not necessarily, a constitutional right of appeal. And I think this might be a dumb question in in the criminal context, is there a constitutional right of appeal? I know there's a six, you know, six Amendment right to effective counsel, but I don't know if there is a constitutional right to appeal a trial court criminal judgment, there

Jennifer Peabody  12:23  
is a sixth amendment right to the effective assistance of attorney on your first appeal. Appeals are statutory, like civil I mean, and you know the statute governs when you can appeal and what you can appeal, but there is a sixth amendment right to effective assistance on that first direct appeal. So without attorneys to take the case. I mean, it's really just as delayed as justice denied, right? So, you know, right now we have a backlog of 700 cases that we in Los Angeles, in this office need to appoint these people are a lot of them are in prison. You know some of them, because of the delay, they may be farmed in some way. We're trying to avoid that by looking at cases and determining who has a good case and might be able to get out immediately. But you know the impact is that you know these individuals are sitting in prison or in jail, waiting for an attorney to help them and to review their case. In turn, it's also slowing down. The Courts of Appeal, right? They they rely on us to find attorneys to take the cases. Just like in civil cases, the appellants bear the burden of filing the first brief they bear the board burden in our cases of making sure we have a complete record. None of that can happen until we find an attorney to do the work

Tim Kowal  13:43 
right and that's going to delay the appeals Is that does that impact as the right of speedy trial? I know an appeal is not a trial, but it's you know, if you think you have a good chance to get a conviction overturned, and meanwhile, you're languishing in in jail or in prison at that point, waiting for appellate counsel to be appointed, your constitutional rights are being harmed by that delay. I

Jennifer Peabody  14:06  
mean, that definitely is a possibility. You may remember a few years ago, there was a situation in the third Appellate District where appeals were being well, they were actually being decided quite slowly, and a couple of attorneys filed, you know, a complaint against the court, and that resulted in some changes in the third Appellate District. So, you know, there have been situations where there have been delays that have resulted in changes in the court. We're trying to avoid that. We're trying to find attorneys who want to do this work. The work is really rewarding and it's quite exciting.

Jeff Lewis  14:45  
Yeah, let me. Let me share in terms of the reward, when I first left the law firm, I've been working at same law firm from coal I've been working at many years ago, when we're still doing paper briefs, by the way, with binding

Jennifer Hansen  14:59  
i. Screen cover, yeah,

Jeff Lewis  15:01  
I didn't have enough I didn't have enough work to start my own law firm, and I really wanted to become an appellate specialist, and so I signed up for CAP LA and was assigned a buddy at the cap la offices who oversaw the work that I did, and I'd get this paper record. Tim, the record was in paper. It was actually in a FedEx package and with a cover letter, kind of like a senior partner letter, saying, associate, here are five issues I've found. There might be more, there might be fewer. Do your own work and good hunting, and you would sit there and pour over the record, and maybe you'd go with the five issues that the staff attorney had pointed out, or maybe find some additional ones. You do a brief you send it to your buddy over at CAP LA, they approve it or make changes, usually, in my experience is light edits, and then you file it, and you get to go argue it, and you communicate with the client when it's all over. You know, most of the time you lose, because statistics are just terrible for these kinds of appeals. But when you win, the the gratitude you get from these clients, these folks who are in prison, is they are just over the moon that somebody is looking at their case and giving them the time of day and treating them like a human being. And I've done work for Fortune, 200 companies I've done, I did 50 or 60 of these appeals through cap. La, by far the more rewarding work was for these individuals who appreciate having someone look at their case. And

Jennifer Peabody  16:24  
our cases are really exciting. Factually, they're really interesting. Factually, you know, they are a good read. It's like reading a crime novel, right? And going through it and trying to find issues the topics are interesting. Whereas, you know, I don't know if the same is true in all civil cases, but you know, they are interesting cases, and our clients are eternally grateful, even when we lose.

Jennifer Hansen  16:51  
So it is sometimes, sometimes a win is just like, you know, the court miscalculated the sentence and they should have had 14 years instead of 16 years. And that's a big win for us, and that's saving someone's, you know, freedom, getting them out a little sooner to be back with their families. And you know, that's to us, that's a win, or recognizing an error in the credits, not I don't want to give the impression that, like we believe everybody's innocent. I mean, obviously these are tough cases, you know, the perfect case. You're probably not going to get that it anytime soon. But, you know, they're still rewarding work to do, like just reviewing everything via second layer check, correcting any kind of things that were left out of the record. Oftentimes, you have to, you know, correspond with the superior core, get some additional record materials, and you can bill for all that, and you can investigate issues, and you can bill for all that. So it's, it's more sort of, like practice, you know, expanding, maybe what you've done on your own or at a law firm. And you know, we hear from attorneys, they really appreciate, like, getting to make their own decisions, getting to make their own call, like, you know, not having defer constantly to a to a partner, you know, getting to or getting to be the one that argues it. And I understand, you know, that helps everybody with their pellet specialization. Like you said, Jeff, that's that's a common refrain that we hear, is that they didn't have enough points, and so they got on to the appellate project. So that's definitely a reason to consider

Jeff Lewis  18:10  
it. So let me ask you this, other than folks looking for more points to qualify to sit for the specialization exam, if you could wave a magic wand, what is the ideal lawyer that you're looking for to apply to the panel, I

Jennifer Peabody  18:22  
think it's someone who likes to read and write right like that's you have to like to research read and write in order to want to do this. So ideally, if you've done an appeal, that's great. If you have a background, maybe trial background, and criminal dependency, juvenile delinquency, civil commitments, that's great, you know, like you said, Jeff, I mean, we don't just expect you to come in and hit the ground running, right? You know, there's going to be a level of oversight in the beginning, a level of assistance, right? You're not going to have to go in and figure out what the issues are by yourself. You're going to have an experienced practitioner who's going to be also looking at the record and giving you guidance and helping you, you know, figure out what is an issue. How do I write this issue? Do I have to worry about forfeiture? Like there's a person here who wants you to succeed, who wants you to like the work, and wants you to continue doing the work. You know, it's a free mentor. I

Tim Kowal  19:23 
think that's important for someone like me or like Jeff, who doesn't have criminal background. I mean, Jeff now has criminal background after having done some work with CAP LA, I don't have any criminal background. And I suspect there are a lot of civil attorneys who are like me that would just, you know, disqualify themselves from from considering something like cap. La, but the way you're describing it, Jennifer, that that there is a mentor there who's going to be doing kind of the first run at issue spotting and helping with Is there a triage process you have when you look at some of these cases and and you're going to spot that? Well, this one looks at the record is so poor that maybe the. One's going to be a, you know, ineffective assistance of counsel case. Maybe that's going to be the appellate issue, rather than attacking the merits, you know, things like that. I wouldn't know, you know how to rate those issues, having never dealt with the criminal case before. But is that, are those the sorts of things that the mentor is going to be helping triage at the beginning, with the issue spotting and, and, and record assessment.

Jennifer Peabody  20:21  
Yes. I mean, like Jeff said, we give you pretty much what is a senior partner letter telling you, like, here's what I looked at, here's the issues I saw. Look into these issues, see what you think. We also provide samples, sample briefs. If you've never seen an appellate brief before, it can be intimidating, right? We can provide you with a sample to know what your brief should look like. And

Jeff Lewis  20:44 
in the old days, I don't know if it's still true. Cap would once a quarter, do a one day MCLE presentation of 8am to 4pm downtown LA learning substantive issues of the latest developments in criminal and dependency law. It's really eye opening and great for getting, you know, you could try to claim a pellet specialization credit, even though it's not pre certified. We

Jennifer Hansen  21:08  
have one of those coming up january 21 so, yeah, those are, those are done. We and we also have some, you know, beginner boot camp trainings online and in person. So we have a lot of training, and not just our project. You know, there's fabulous websites like, I want to shout out 80 eyes. Website, C taps. Website, those are two of the other projects I mentioned. They have amazing sample briefings, sample banks, practice guides. There's a lot of resources for people that are new to this

Jeff Lewis  21:36 
so, and you'll provide us the link so we can put those in our show notes. In terms of people want to sign up. Let me, let me ask, what is the minimum commitment you're looking for from somebody who wants to put their toe in the water and see if this is the right thing for them? What is the minimum commitment you're looking for? I mean, I

Jennifer Peabody  21:51 
think ideally it would be someone who, you know, wants to take several cases a year and wants to really try to add this to their practice, and not really just have it be a one off, right? Because we invest a lot of time and energy in resources, into training the attorneys who want to do this work, you know. So we want people who are interested in adding this to their practice. I mean, obviously things might happen. You might decide you don't love it, but, you know, you should at least go into it with an open mind and the dream of possibly adding this to the their practice. And I think once people take cases and see that it's not that different from civil right, we all look at the brief, we all look at the record, we all identify issues, and then we research. If you're a good researcher and writer, we can teach you the criminal law. We can tell you where to look. We'll give you the starting points. But I think we do want someone who does want to take a few to several cases a year, and the

Jennifer Hansen  22:51 
briefing is pretty similar. You know, we have the same standard of review applicable law, you know, error, prejudice, like all the concepts you know, if you all are experienced appellate practitioners, all of this is going to transfer. It's just learning a new area.

Jeff Lewis  23:06  
You know, in our world, there's another crisis, the civil world of court reporters. It's not enough court reporters to cover hearings, and they're not provided for free anymore. It's a real access to justice issue, and a response to that. LA County, it's really putting pressure, financial pressure. They're increasing the pay. They're doing incentives. They're doing whatever they can to get more court reporters. And I was wondering on your side, on the criminal side, Are there efforts to increase the hourly rate or other incentives to encourage attorneys to participate in these panels?

Jennifer Peabody  23:38 
Yeah, we are always fighting for more money. Unfortunately, you know, our budget is controlled by the state of California. We do have a budget change proposal in it's with the governor's office right now, and that would increase the panel attorney rate by $40 an hour. So that means that the lowest level cases, they will receive $150 the middle level cases will be 160 and the upper tier cases, which are murder, sex cases, long record cases, those will be up to 107 $170 an hour, which makes us a little more competitive. We're still not where we need to be. This is just a starting point. So right now, that proposal is with the governor's office. We're hoping to make it into his budget. We should know something by middle of January, also in that budget increase is an increase for the appellate projects to add staffing so that we can, you know, be able to assist more, be able to recruit more, and then also be able to do all of the other tasks that we do at the project. So we are trying, we're also, you know, we're making a pitch to try to change the way the state is calculating student loan forgiveness. Right now, our panel attorneys, in theory, could qualify. The Judicial Council will. Certify hours, but we're not seeing much success yet. So is leading a charge here to really try to recalculate how we could have the JCC certified someone as a full time appel, indigent appellate attorney you want to speak to

Jennifer Hansen  25:20 
the new rates would go into effect July of 2025, so hopefully sooner rather than later. Yeah, you want

Tim Kowal  25:29 
to speak to to those in our audience who are partners or who are who have Junior associates under them that need to get some appellate experience. Want to tell them what a great opportunity it is to, you know, to increase their value to the other cases in their workload and and maybe, you know, eliminate some idle hours, if maybe there are some junior associates who who are not 100% occupied. And maybe this would be an opportunity to at least put them to work while getting some some valuable experience and and getting at least some compensation and and doing a good deed for access to justice,

Jennifer Hansen  26:10 
all those things, I think that's good to pitch. Yeah, yeah.

Jennifer Peabody  26:14  
It's a way to get your your junior attorneys experience right. When you're in a civil firm and your clients want the partners to do the work. Our clients just want someone to do the work, someone to listen to them, someone to look at their case, and someone to write a brief. And I think that there is a lot of opportunity there for junior level attorneys in civil firms to do this work and get experience in this work and bring in something to cover their time right? Again, it's not going to be as high as the Civil rates, but they're going to get the experience that a lot of attorneys aren't getting, who are at the junior level, when the high paying clients want the senior staff attorneys to do the work, and

Jennifer Hansen  27:02 
then when they're ready to go argue a big case for your firm, you could say, well, they've already argued 10 cases, Criminal Appeals. I mean, the argument prep is the same. It's reviewing the briefs, it's getting into the record. It's, you know, being prepared to deal with questions from the court that all those skills are things that are 100% transferable no matter what the topic. So seems like it's a win win for people that that have associates that are needing to get more experience and

Jennifer Peabody  27:30  
also, like we mentioned earlier, become certified appellate specialists. They can get their points easier doing these appeals than probably a lot in firms where they're doing appeals.

Tim Kowal  27:45  
I imagine it's also a good way to build, I mean, going along with getting the experience and getting the points. You're getting oral argument experience. You're getting interaction with the with the appellate justices, and so they're going to see you as a as an advocate who is not only, you know, working up probably has his or her own practice, but is also participating in these, in these capped la projects cases. And I wonder if that helps attorneys build a rapport with the panels that they're going to be, being appear, appearing in front of the rest of their practice.

Jennifer Peabody  28:18 
Yes. And also, I mean, doing appointed appeals, you have the greatest chance of going before the California Supreme Court, because if you look at their cases that they're granting review on the largest number is typically appointed appeals. It's criminal cases, it's there have been a few dependency cases that have gone up there recently. So you really increase your odds of getting the California Supreme Court to take one of your cases?

Jeff Lewis  28:46 
Yeah, my one and only touch with the California Supreme Court was through cap LA, I had a case. It's very unusual. My dude, he was arrested with a lot of cash, and LAPD seized the cash, and my guy was guilty of what he did, completely guilty. He didn't want to fight that, but he wanted to get his cash back, and he filed three separate handwritten improper motions. Hey, LAPD, may have my cash back. Said No, and I worked with CAP LA, and they're they're mostly criminal there, but my supervising person at the cap la said, try this civil route. So we did it, and we went up on a petition for written mandate all the way to California. Supreme Court. And so the California Supreme Court ordered the LAPD to return that cash to that dude who never would have gotten that cash back otherwise, except for cap. La, so it can happen.

Jennifer Peabody  29:34 
Yes, Jennifer Hansen recently argued a case in the California Supreme Court. All this new legislation, we get a lot of challenge to the new legislation, and that was one of the cases that she argued. And and

Jennifer Hansen  29:48 
it wasn't even really a criminal issue. It was a case about juveniles going to adult court. But the actual issue in the case was whether or not a law was a lawful amendment to a proper. Position. So all of the research I was doing was about various different propositions over the years and amendment clauses. And it was all statutory interpretation. It was really nothing about the criminal law. It was 100% you know, classic civil issue, but that was what I was up on in the Supreme Court. And, you know, I never would have just stumbled on the case myself. It was only because I was here, you know, in Cap, cap muted attorneys, and I just took on this case, having no idea would be there, but it turned out to be a huge experience for my legal career.

Tim Kowal  30:33 
Earlier, you said that the the disparity, the gap between the number of cases in the backlog, I think around 700 you said, and the number of attorneys available on the panel, which I think was around 450 had to do with maybe increased prosecutions. And I wonder if you have could share a little bit more insight into that. I i was of the impression that prosecutions in LA under under Gascon may have been down in recent years, but is that? Is that not the case?

Jennifer Peabody  31:07 
We didn't see a drop under Gascon. I mean, I know that that was one of the talking points, but we didn't see a decrease in cases going to jury trial, you know? And then with a lot of the new laws that either were enacted by proposition or by the legislature, that also led to a huge increase in cases that we have and now, with the new district attorney coming into Los Angeles, we don't know what's going to happen. Quite frankly, we anticipate there will probably be another increase. We don't know, so our numbers may go up even higher. Um, you know, we we don't know what's going to happen. Yeah, well, what

Jennifer Hansen  31:49 
we do have a lot of appeals from in the last couple years, though, is the legislature, um, changed various laws and have made retroactive options for people who've been incarcerated for many years, 20, 3040, years to get back into court and to be reconsidered with some of the new changes. And so that's actually been like a really gratifying experience for a lot of appellate attorneys. To some people are representing clients that they represented 20 years ago who are coming back to court and they're getting their sentences recalibrated, and they're, you know, getting 20 years knocked off their sentence, or they're getting released. And it's, it's really kind of cool for people that represented people, you know, the chances of winning, as you mentioned on an appeal, are pretty low. And so to for people to feel like in the 90s and the, you know, early 2000s when these there was an epidemic of mass incarceration in California, and people were going away for lifetimes, there has been some effort to go back and take a second look at some of these people, and people who maybe did bad things when they were 1617, 1820, and who are now 50 and 55 and have done great in prison. They're getting to come back, and I actually find these are some of the rewarding cases that we have. It has obviously increased the caseload, but it's actually a kind of nice part of the practice to get to see people on the other end, and get to have clients that have gotten out of custody and are in the community and doing great, and have a job and are working, and sort of see that not everybody had to get thrown away, and we can

Jennifer Peabody  33:19  
win at a much higher rate,

Tim Kowal  33:21 
so Possibly, yeah, well, we talked about the origins of this problem. We talked about CAP LA's work. We talked about how it can be a rewarding experience to pitch in to fill this disparity between the huge backlog of cases and become one of the one of the attorneys on the cap la panel, or one of the other project panels, Jen and Jennifer. Do you have any other solutions or insights that you want to share with our audience before we sign off?

Jennifer Peabody  33:54 
Give this work a try. Honestly. Give it a try. I think that you will also find it really rewarding. It's really nice to be able to make a difference in someone's life. And even if you don't make a difference, people are so appreciative that you're even willing to look at their case and explain, perhaps, why. You know, they don't have any issues on appeal. Maybe they've never been told that by their you know, burden. They're overburdened public defender or alternate public defender, and we are able to spend a lot of time with them and explain things to them, and they're grateful, even if you don't win. So I just really encourage people to look into this as an additional income stream. Both Jennifer and I, you know, made a living doing appointed appeals before coming to cap LA and so it is a possibility to make a good income once you're trained and ready to take on more and more serious cases anything else, and

Jeff Lewis  34:53 
you didn't have to deal with client trust, accounting while you were doing this work. We

Jennifer Peabody  34:57  
we do not have to do that, but. Need to make sure to check the box on the State Bar form, even though we don't have these accounts. But yes, you don't have to chase money, right? And we

Jennifer Hansen  35:07  
cover your malpractice insurance. You don't have to have separate malpractice insurance to take our cases. And you kind of talked about this before, but I do think that people that are already practicing in the appellate courts, I think it's always going to be good to have justice, to see your name on well written briefs. And you know, if they know you as a civil attorney, they're going to know that you know you taking a cap or cap la case or an Adi case is probably outside your wheelhouse, but they're going to recognize what's a good brief and good writing. And you know, you may not win, but you're getting more experience. And it's a service to the bar. It's a service. And you know, we just did a recruiting event with several court of appeal justices recently, and they care about this issue. I mean, it's not even about the results. It's like, they want to have quality attorneys, and they recognize the value of this work. And so if it's something that you're not ready to do this full time, even if you just do it part time, it's something that really is valuable, and also for trial attorneys. You know, my like, I said my husband is a public defender. It's really, you know, can get tiring being in the trenches all the time, or if you're a trial attorney and you just want to kind of change direction, this is something you can do part time to to see if you might prefer research and writing rather than the grind in the courtroom. And we have a lot of people that you know stepped away from the trial world, and have transitioned, and are now full time doing appeals. So it's an option for both sides of the spectrum. Is

Jeff Lewis  36:28  
the record now all electronic? Is there any more paper? Yeah,

Jennifer Peabody  36:31  
in the Second Appellate District, it's all electronic. So we have attorneys living out of state, you know, living somewhere where it's maybe more affordable. They're doing this as you know, part of a retirement gig to supplement their social security or other pensions. They're doing it when they're, you know, they want to spend more time with their kids. You can do it from anywhere, at any time, and you can really choose how many cases you take. And you can choose, you know, basically how much money you want to make after you're fully trained.

Jennifer Hansen  37:04  
One of the upsides of the pandemic has been, as you all know, the on, you know, virtual argument opportunity. And so in, you know, a lot of cases, still, we do have people that are virtually arguing. So they don't have to, you know, they want to argue the case. They don't have to fly down to Los Angeles, or, you know, even deal with getting a hotel or anything like that. So it's, it's really, I think, increased, you know, access to justice in that way too, to have more people being able to take these cases who don't necessarily live like right in Los Angeles, that can be anywhere in the state or in another state,

Tim Kowal  37:37 
alright? Jennifer Hanson, Jennifer Peabody, thank you so much for sharing with us about CAP la project and the great opportunity that it presents. And I think that was a very persuasive pitch about how you can go about building a reputation, building a brand as an attorney who generates excellent work product and also cares about our system of access, of the administration of justice and and I think your your your colleagues and the bench will will notice that. So I think that's, that's a great pitch to end on, Jeff. I think that's going to wrap us up this episode.

Jeff Lewis  38:14  
Yeah, I'm not sure when this

episode is going to drop. Let me just do one last pitch for on Tuesday, December 10, we're gonna have a meet up at the Grand Central Market downtown LA if you come up to me and you tell me you've applied the California appellate project panel, I will buy you a beer the Golden Road brewery. Okay, so find me and tell me you've signed up. Okay,

Tim Kowal  38:36 
all right, we'll have to see you there. That's gonna wrap us up. If you have suggestions for future guests or topics to discuss on the podcast, please email us at info, at Cal podcast.com, and we'll be back next time sharing more tips and insights about the California court system.

Announcer  38:53 
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