There are two kinds of briefs that address Ninth Circuit decisions. These informal and formal briefs serve as your primary form of communication with a circuit representative. It’s up to you and an attending attorney to fill these out to the best of your ability. Unfortunately, even a formatting error could delay your right to legal action.
Informal Briefs
Informal briefs allow you to give a county clerk a basic understanding of the challenge you wish to issue against a decision made by the Ninth District. The district allows you to take up to fifty pages to elaborate on your challenge. In those pages, you are required to elaborate on:
- The date of the decision you’re appealing
- What action you’ve taken in the wake of that decision
- The facts of your case
- How you intend to present your case to the court of appeals
You should use your brief to outline both your personal experience with the court’s decision and the legal precedent that supports your challenge. Our attorneys can break down what statutes you may want to include in an informal brief.
You may receive an outline of a court’s preferred informal brief when you first appeal a court’s decision. If you do not receive an outline, you can work with an attorney to find a sample and format your outreach accordingly.
Formal Briefs
Formal briefs elaborate on the position you took in your informal brief. These briefs are often longer than their less formal counterparts. You also are less likely to have a direct hand in the information shared via your formal document. In many cases, immigration lawyers can take over the creation of these briefs, both for the sake of ease and comprehensiveness.
If you think your formal brief may exceed 50 pages, double-spaced, you need to inform the Ninth Circuit as such. You can file a motion requesting permission to include your extra pages. While the Ninth Circuit won’t approve every request of this nature, you can work with an attorney to argue for your need.
For a free case review with an Immigration lawyer, call
