Trigger warning:  this post may cause appellate lawyers to have nightmares.

There has been a spate of technical glitches lately that caused critical notices from the North Carolina Court of Appeals to end up in “quarantine” in counsel’s e-mail inboxes.  In at least two instances, counsel failed to receive notice of an upcoming oral argument.  In one of those cases, the oral argument went forward without counsel appearing at all for one side.

I’m relatively tech-savvy for someone born in the 70s, but I won’t try to guess what combination of unlucky bounces led to these disasters.  Our appellate courts have an excellent and dedicated IT team, and I know that they are trying to suss out whether there is something about the courts’ emails behind these problems. Not to add to your overfull plate, fellow appellate lawyers, but I suggest you make a habit of manually checking the appellate courts’ calendars on a regular basis for now.  The North Carolina Court of Appeals posts their calendars here, and the North Carolina Supreme Court posts theirs here.

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