A text version of the guided tour's narration.
Welcome to My Appeal Coach! Our tools are written by appellate attorneys for appellate attorneys. This video gives a short tour and demonstration of how the site can help you prepare for your next big appeal.
We've built the world's first AI-powered moot court simulator, where you can practice your oral argument any time, day or night. Upload your brief and choose your court from current and historic jurists. Listen to an AI advocate argue your case, or step up to the podium yourself and face a panel that interrupts with real questions. This isn't just entering prompts into ChatGPT. Tens of thousands of lines of custom code and prompts make it a realistic, conversational moot. You control the length of the argument, how hot the panel is, and the complexity of the questions. It's the next best thing to a live moot, at a fraction of the cost.
Let's set up a session. First, log in to your account — you can have a monthly subscription, buy a single use, or start a free trial. Next, name your case; we'll call ours Brown. Then upload your brief — and, if you like, your opponent's brief, so the panel understands both sides. These are public documents; you aren't sharing anything privileged or confidential.
MyAppealCoach simulates several courts. Here's the Fifth Circuit, and here's the Supreme Court of Texas — each with its own bench.
But you're not limited to these. You can build your own court. Click Create Your Own Court, give it a name and list three to nine panelists — here, the First Court of Appeals in Houston — adding a photo for each if you like. Save it, and your court is stored in your account, ready any time. For this case, though, we'll step up to the United States Supreme Court.
Now choose how you'd like to practice. You can field questions from a hot bench, deliver a rebuttal to the other side, or sit back and let an AI advocate argue your case and answer the panel's questions. We'll practice questions.
These sliders tune the session — how long you argue, how often the bench interrupts, how hard the questions are, and the mix of law, record, and policy.
And if there's a particular issue you'd like the panel to focus on, just ask. Type your request in the box — here, we tell the Court to focus on the Tim Cole Act. The Court honors reasonable requests, and shows you exactly how it steered the questions. When you're ready, enter the courtroom.
The demonstration then begins a live simulated oral argument: the advocate presents and the bench interrupts with questions, with each exchange shown in the on-screen transcript.
Counsel (for Harris County): May it please the Court. Alfred Brown spent twelve years in prison for a murder he did not commit. After his release, he sued Harris County in federal court. While that federal suit was pending, he accepted nearly a million dollars from the State of Texas to compensate him for his time in prison. The issue before this Court today is whether accepting that state compensation under the Tim Cole Act requires that Brown dismiss his federal lawsuit.
Justice Sotomayor: Counsel, the statute says a claimant waives the right to bring an action. Mr. Brown had already brought his. How do you waive something you have already done?
Counsel: "Bring" is not frozen at the filing date. A party brings an action by prosecuting it — and Mr. Brown is prosecuting his action today. The Dynamic CRM case supports this: it rejects the narrow Black's Law Dictionary definition Mr. Brown advocates and interprets "bringing an action" to mean conveying, leading, carrying, or causing to come along with — including the steps necessary to complete a case.
Justice Gorsuch: But the Tim Cole Act is remedial legislation for people the State wrongly imprisoned. Shouldn't we construe it liberally in his favor, and demand a clear statement before extinguishing a pending federal suit?
Counsel: The Tim Cole Act should be construed as the Legislature intended — for the State, rather than local government, to shoulder the burden of compensating exonerees. This Court stated clearly in Oakley that Section 103.152 protects local entities from having to add to a settlement paid by the State. And in Brown's own mandamus, this Court noted that payment works to the exclusion of any other action. A liberal construction would eviscerate that purpose and could be devastating to smaller counties. It would also encourage exonerees to sue local government before asking the State for compensation. That cannot be what the Legislature intended.
At the end of your argument, you'll receive a transcript with suggested answers. Practice as many times as you'd like before your argument, and all you need to get started is a copy of your brief.
You've heard of Fantasy Football, but true appellate nerds play Fantasy Moot. With Fantasy Moot, you can argue Brown v. Board of Education, Gideon v. Wainwright, and other famous cases. These simulators use the same cases and arguments but ask our tools to generate new questions, to give you an idea of how it feels to drive the moot court simulator. This lets you practice using the tools while learning about history and the challenges these attorneys faced.
Our Appellate Navigator is always free and is a great resource to bookmark. It contains local federal appellate rules and appellate rules for Texas, California, Florida, Illinois, and Georgia, and links to oral-argument recordings in these jurisdictions. It also contains online style guides and research tools.
One of the most valuable parts of the Appellate Navigator is the Procedure Navigator, a tool that walks you through procedural questions for federal and Texas appeals. Let's assume we have a case we want to appeal in the Fifth Circuit. Click the circuit, then click Continue. We have a lot of choices; we want to appeal a final judgment, so we click option 1. The Appellate Navigator provides tips for appealing a final judgment, with relevant citations. The tool advises that the first step is to make sure the judgment is truly final, and it cites several rules and statutes to help you confirm. Step 2 walks you through the rules on perfecting an appeal. Step 3 provides the relevant appellate deadlines from Rule 4. The next sections help new attorneys with logistics such as admission to the Fifth Circuit and how to log into PACER and file documents. There are tips on how to order transcripts, obtain and cite the record, and put together your brief. Since you're the appellant, the Navigator walks you through preparing your appendix, and there are links to official Fifth Circuit resources. The Procedure Navigator is particularly useful for attorneys practicing in a new jurisdiction or handling an unusual appellate matter.
The Procedure Navigator also covers Texas courts, including Texas's new Fifteenth Court of Appeals. Everything we've talked about is free for any appellate counsel to use — except the more complex AI tools.
We hope you enjoy these appellate tools, and we're happy to answer your questions and help in any way you need. To get started, just visit MyAppealCoach.com.