Practice Tip: Keep a List of Appealable Errors During Trial
After a long trial, the last thing you want to do is wade back through a transcript to find potential errors that would justify an appeal (or hopefully a cross-appeal instead). To avoid this drudgery (or at least alleviate it), keep a running list of potentially appealable errors during the trial. Before the trial starts, make a chart with the following three columns: (1) date and time, (2) what was happening (i.e., the witness on the stand, during argument over jury instructions, etc.), and (3) the nature of the error. If that judicial error turns out to change the result of the trial, you will be able to find it and its context faster when the transcript does arrive.