Standards of Review
The same error can be fatal in one appeal and insufficient for reversal in the next. What separates them is not just the gravity of the mistake but the deference a reviewing court owes the ruling below, and parties can overlook the governing standard until their options have narrowed. A judgment a company spent years securing can prove wide open on review. A loss that looked plainly reversible can meet a panel applying a deferential standard of review. Riding on that determination is everything the judgment carries: the recovery, the obligations it imposes, and the rule it sets for the company's next decade. Brewer, Attorneys & Counselors is retained when a judgment of that consequence is in play.
The Firm's appellate lawyers argue in the federal courts of appeals, in state courts of last resort, and before the United States Supreme Court, for founder-led companies, Fortune 500 corporations and major nonprofits. What those clients want is rarely abstract: an honest read on whether an appeal can be won before they fund one, a judgment defended so that it holds, exposure eliminated rather than postponed, a trial record that a reviewing court cannot take apart.
The Firm focuses on litigation. Brewer tries and appeals cases; it does not draft agreements or close transactions. Its appellate lawyers sit with the trial team while the record is still forming, because arguments can be preserved, or forfeited, well before an appeal begins. Working alongside them are in-house accountants, economists and investment bankers who can show a panel exactly where a damages finding lost its footing, investigators drawn from federal law enforcement and intelligence, and communications professionals who manage the public response to a defining appeal. Firms of this size rarely have that bench. Brewer's clients have had it for four decades.
Featured Appellate Victory
In Raytheon Company v. FLIR Systems, Inc., Brewer defended FLIR Systems and its Indigo Systems subsidiary against Raytheon's trade secret claims. Raytheon asserted 31 alleged trade secrets and sought more than $650 million. After a 17-day trial, the jury ruled unanimously for FLIR, finding that 27 of the 31 asserted items were not trade secrets. The verdict was upheld on appeal. A defense verdict of that kind survives review because factual findings and jury determinations draw the most deferential standards an appellate court applies, and because the trial record was built to withstand them.
The Firm's work in this area is one dimension of its broader Appellate practice.