Whether you're handling the appeal or bringing in an appellate specialist, the decisions you make in the trial court can't be undone — and whether you preserved your arguments for appeal and made the right procedural decisions can make all the difference in the world once the case goes "up." Just ask Microsoft, which suffered a $200 million loss in a Texas federal court a few years ago, only to be stung again on appeal when the court held it failed to preserve arguments it might have otherwise won.
Of course, most litigators know the golden rule of appellate law: you waive your arguments on appeal if you don't raise them in the trial court. Actually, the correct term is "forfeit," not "waive" — waiver requires the intentional relinquishment of a known right, while forfeiture occurs whenever a party fails to preserve an argument for appeal whether intentional or not. (Courts and litigators tend to use the terms interchangeably.)
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