When a State of North Carolina agency appealed one Durham lawyer’s victory at trial, she turned to the Law Office of Mark L. Hayes for help. Mr. Hayes advised her on the necessary rules and deadlines, and also wrote a draft brief for the lawyer to use at the Court of Appeals. All of this work was done while the lawyer maintained her primary responsibility for the attorney-client relationship with the appellant.
“When [the attorney] called, she told me that she was concerned about understanding the North Carolina Rules of Appellate Procedure, meeting all the deadlines, and just presenting her case in the correct format,” Mark Hayes said. “She even asked about whether she was responsible for putting the colored cover on her brief. A lot of trial attorneys want help with the appeal of their case because they don’t want to drop their representation of a client, but they don’t know if they can handle an appeal when they’ve never done one before.”
The Law Office of Mark L. Hayes keeps confidential the names of the attorney, client, and case in such representations, and the Durham attorney was the only lawyer of record at the Court of Appeals.