Part Two: Appellate Oral Argument from the Decisionmaker's Perspective

Melanie Gold is a partner at Complex Appellate Litigation Group who spent more than three decades as a research attorney for California’s appellate courts. She worked primarily with the justices of the Fourth District Court of Appeal in San Diego, and also with the Sixth District and the California Supreme Court. Over those years she analyzed thousands of briefs and petitions, advised justices on hundreds of appeals, and helped draft nearly a thousand opinions across areas including anti-SLAPP, real property, employment, arbitration, and class action law. That work gave her a close view of how appellate courts actually decide cases. She has taught Appellate Advocacy at the University of San Diego and California Western, and she founded and chairs the San Diego County Bar Association’s Access to Appellate Justice Program.

M.C. Sungaila is a partner at the Complex Appellate Litigation Group, where she has briefed or argued more than 170 appeals spanning complex and cutting-edge issues across a range of practice areas. She has handled matters before the U.S. Supreme Court, multiple state supreme courts, numerous federal and state appellate courts, and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. She also teaches Space Law and Policy at LMU Loyola Law School in Los Angeles.