When a Massachusetts appellate court is reviewing a decision of a lower court, the court is examining information that was created during a civil or criminal proceeding before a trial court. An example might be that your small business was taken to court over faulty installation of equipment. If your case is tried to verdict and you lose, a variety of documents must be transmitted to the Appeals Court before the appeal process can begin.
The process of gathering the trial transcript, exhibits, docket sheets, and other documents from the trial court is called “assembling the record.” This is accomplished by the clerk’s office of the relevant court where the verdict took place.
The process of assembling the record is supposed to be automatically accomplished by the clerk’s office once a Notice of Appeal is filed. In practice, however, the process can be much more cumbersome. The staff of clerk’s offices are not always responsive, and it is often necessary to make multiple foll0w-ups, sometimes by both phone and letter to get this process accomplished.
This work is not glamorous, but it is a key part of what a law firm representing you on appeal needs to do. Your lawyer must work tenaciously to make sure the record is assembled by the trial court, because without that first step, an appeal simply cannot take place.
