"You have more influence as a group," said Mr. Siegel, the appeals lawyer.

No one, including the original trial lawyer and subsequent appeals lawyers, had ever gone to the scene.

Now the appeals lawyers take over, and as Mr. Pichardo's case illustrates, it will be years before their work is done.

"Unless he gets himself a first-class appeals lawyer."

Or, if they tried to hire an appeals lawyer, they often found no success.

The waiting list for an appeals lawyer to be assigned by the court is about four years.

The appeals lawyers later said he had mistakenly leaped on her while bounding down a staircase.

Mr. Adler is a former prosecutor who is known as an appeals lawyer.

Good appeals lawyers are important because bad trial lawyers are common.

The society's staff of appeals lawyers has shrunk by a third, to 98 from 148 in 1994.