During a normal summer, Judge Philip Berger Jr. of the North Carolina Court of Appeals puts together a program for the law students who spend time between semesters interning for the court's 15 judges. In something of a soup to nuts course on how state law is made and interpreted in the Tar Heel State, the interns usually meet with the state attorney general, lawyers with the public defender's office, as well as lawyers for the governor and state legislature.

Well, needless to say, this has not been a normal summer in Raleigh, or anywhere else, really. 

But Berger and his colleague Judge Richard Dietz didn't want to leave gaping holes in the resumes of all the interns missing the experience working for the court this summer. In May while continuing their work deciding cases and writing opinions by day, the pair began to swiftly pull together a summer appellate seminar covering the basics on topics including appellate practice and procedure, statutory interpretation, and legal writing during their evenings. While putting together the seminar for the interns, the pair saw an outpouring of disappointment from aspiring lawyers and new graduates on Twitter and LinkedIn about summer plans being deferred or, worse yet, cancelled.

"We thought 'If we're going to put something together and it's all remote, why just limit it to the students we were planning to bring in as our interns?'" said Dietz, of the decision to open the free online program the judges cooked up first to all students at North Carolina law schools and then to any aspiring lawyer aiming to practice appellate law in the state. 

Dietz, 43, was a partner in the appellate & Supreme Court team at Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton prior to being nominated to a vacant seat on the intermediate North Carolina appellate bench in 2014 and retained for an eight-year term by voters two years later. He graduated law school himself as the dot-com bubble was bursting and did research on the implications of Enron's collapse and the ensuing passage of Sarbanes-Oxley Act while a research fellow in comparative law at Kyushu University in Japan. Having also lived through the recession of the last decade, Dietz says he has a soft spot for lawyers whose formative years in the profession are met with limited opportunities.   

Dietz and Berger put together their curriculum and reached out to North Carolina law schools in May, rolled it out in June, and finished earlier this month. The program, which has lectures and materials available now online, drew about 200 new and aspiring North Carolina lawyers, about 150 of whom viewed all seven 50-minute lectures and participated in three break-out small group Webex sessions that were limited to up to 15 participants. Those that finished the seminar are set to get a certificate for the court, but Dietz told participants in his final lecture that they should be prepared to explain exactly what they picked up in the program since potential employers are unlikely to have heard of it.

Across the country in California, the North Carolina program caught the attention of Haynes and Boone appellate co-chair Mary-Christine "M.C." Sungaila, a member of the Orange County Bar Association Board of Directors and a member of its COVID-19 task force, which has been organizing two free webinars per week for members since mid-March. 

"When I saw this, I thought, 'We haven't done something for law students and our law student members,'" Sungaila said. 

Sungaila helped pull together a team of faculty including legal writing expert Ross Guberman, Loyola Law School Professor Paula Mitchell who directs the school's Ninth Circuit appellate clinic, former Court of Appeal Justice and founder of the Grignon Law Firm Margaret Grignon, Orange County Superior Court Judge Kimberly Knill to teach a free four-part summer academy on appellate law via webinar for the bar association's law student members. The academy, set to begin on Friday, July 17, is set to cover topics such as brief writing, oral argument, and jobs in appellate law.

"I'm interested in getting the next generation of lawyers who might be interested in appellate exposure to it," Sungaila said. She said she's also hoping to give students and new lawyers something of use in a moment when things such as job prospects and even their ability to take the bar exam are in flux.

Dietz said that he hopes that other courts and bar associations will look at the materials his court has online from its seminar and make their own effort to give aspiring lawyers useful experience during this otherwise "gloomy" time.

"There's still time in the summer," Dietz said. "So if people want to try to put something together, it's not too late."