Raleigh appellate attorney Troy Shelton can imagine himself ridin’ his horse into town, six-guns a blazin’. “I tell clients I’m a hired gun. I’m a mercenary.”
Shelton has spent most of his career practicing appellate law. He is an NC Bar board-certified appellate specialist. The core of his practice at Dowling PLLC is complex appeals at the state and federal levels.
Shelton represents plaintiffs, like abuse victims, as well as large corporate defendants. He also represents government entities and elected officials. “I’m a generalist who can speak to generalist appellate judges. I prefer to go deep on a difficult legal issue and then have an engaging conversation with the court about what the law is or should be,” said Shelton.
While most of his clients have been in NC, he has served as lead appellate counsel in many out-of-state cases, including other federal circuits and other state appellate courts.
Three-Part Relationship
Shelton likes to establish a three-part relationship with the trial attorney and the client. “The client often does not understand the appellate process and how it differs from the trial court, so it’s important to explain how an appeal works,” said Shelton.
“The first thing I ask the trial attorney is, ‘What errors do you think the trial court committed?’ They often have a sense of what they think went wrong. I’m going to have questions for him like, ‘I don’t understand this part of the record or what was really going on behind the scenes. Help me understand what the strategy was.”’
Shelton then crafts a story to present to the court. “When I write the fact section, I try to tell a persuasive story, but the judge should not be able to look at any particular sentence and say, ‘the attorney is being argumentative.’ You need to get their attention and make the case look interesting to the judges. You don’t want to make things overly complicated. With a compelling story, an interesting legal issue, or both, the court is going to be more engaged with the case,” explained Shelton.
“If it is before the SCONC, it’s a matter of counting. I need to consider how to make this case compelling to four justices.”
High-Stakes Cases
Shelton said that if a case has a high probability of being appealed, such as a big dollar award, he advises trial counsel to retain him before the trial to act as an embedded appellate counsel. “I sit through the trial, assist with arguing purely legal motions and jury instructions, assist the attorneys in making sure everything is perfectly preserved for an appeal if we lose and decide we needed an appeal,” Shelton explained. While trial attorneys focus on winning, Shelton said he can focus on how to win on appeal if the client loses at trial.
Children’s Rights
While Shelton was a student at UNC School of Law, he was a volunteer for the Durham Guardian ad Litem program, where he advocated for the best interests of abused and neglected children in trial court. He later served as volunteer appellate counsel for the program. Shelton also helped create and administer the Appellate Pro Bono Program for the state’s appellate courts.
In 2021, he argued before the N.C. Supreme Court in Deminski v. State Board of Education, which overturned a Court of Appeals decision regarding child abuse. As a result of his win, public schools now have a constitutional duty to act when they know students are being abused at school. Shelton continues to represent abused children in other cases, often partnering with trial counsel before an appeal is taken.
In 2023, Shelton was presented with the Young Attorney Award for Pro Bono Service by the NC Bar Association.
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