Laila Hadiwijaya
Founding partner
Writes and argues civil appeals, from a contract judgment to a petition for rehearing.
Laila spent her first years in practice drafting opinions for an appellate judge, which is where she learned how a brief is actually read: once quickly, in chambers, and then again only if the first page earned it. She opened the firm to write briefs for that first reading. Most of her clients arrive after a trial someone else handled, with a judgment they think is wrong and a deadline they have just learned about. She tells them early, and in writing, which issues she would raise and which she would leave alone.
Takes on
- Contract and business judgments
- Property and land use rulings
- Petitions for rehearing
- Oral argument
Laila’s admissions, courts and schools
Bar admissions
District of Columbia
2009
Maryland
2010
Courts
Supreme Court of the United States
U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit
U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit
District of Columbia Court of Appeals
Education
J.D., Georgetown University Law Center
B.A., University of Maryland
Languages
English
Indonesian
Memberships
The District of Columbia Bar
Laila on the first page of a brief
A judge with forty briefs on the desk decides on the first page whether yours is worth a careful read. So I write that page last, after the rest is finished, and I rewrite it until it states the error, the rule and the remedy in plain sentences.
I would rather raise two strong issues than seven. Each weak point a court has to wade through costs some of the credit the strong ones earned.