When must the appellant and appellee serve and file ordinary appellate briefs?

Confirm that ordinary Rule 31 rather than Rule 28.1 cross-appeal briefing applies.

Verify actual record filing for the appellant’s principal brief.

Verify appellant-brief service and delivery facts for the appellee’s brief.

Read any shorter or longer time and keep a reply’s separate oral-argument limit distinct.

1. Identify the actual procedure and required actor.
2. Read the controlling event, service or stay evidence.
3. Apply applicable additions, coupled limits and actual directions.
4. Complete the required acts and preserve proof.

First compute the base period under FRAP 26(a), excluding the service day and counting every calendar day, with final-day rollover. When the paper was neither served electronically nor delivered on the date stated in the proof of service, Rule 26(c) adds three days after that base otherwise expires. Apply final-day rollover to the added period. The isolated preset does not calculate that addition.

Rule 26(a)(6) includes the listed federal holidays and days declared holidays by the President or Congress. For periods after an event, it also includes holidays declared by the state of the district court that rendered the challenged judgment or order, or the circuit clerk’s principal office. Establish the actual applicable calendar and inaccessibility. The national preset does not infer additional state holidays or granted relief.

The shared page contains different principal-brief triggers, and the appellee preset omits the possible Rule 26(c) addition. No computed date or paid action is published. The separate forty-day arithmetic is not changed.

Both filing and service

Rule 31(a)(1) requires each principal brief to be served and filed within its applicable period.

Different triggers

The appellant’s forty days start from record filing. The appellee’s thirty days start from service of the appellant’s brief. A common page does not merge these events.

Circuit shortening

Rule 31(a)(2) allows a court that routinely decides merits promptly to shorten service and filing time by local rule or case order.

Cross-appeals

Rule 28.1(a) applies when a cross-appeal is filed and displaces Rule 31(a)(1). Identify actual roles and the correct briefing sequence.

Reply and argument backstop

Rule 31(a)(1) separately addresses the appellant’s twenty-one-day reply after appellee-brief service, at least seven days before argument unless the court allows later filing for good cause.

• This guide does not read local rules or orders, infer service or delivery, determine an appeal’s merits or grant relief.
• Confirm actual briefing roles, separate service and current circuit requirements before using a national default.

• Establish the ordinary briefing procedure and actor.
• Verify record filing or actual brief service as applicable.
• Review Rule 26(c) and actual service facts for the appellee.
• Read local instructions and actual directions.
• Serve and file the correct brief and preserve separate proof.
• Court-of-appeals electronic filing ends at midnight in the circuit clerk’s principal-office time zone under Rule 26(a)(4)(B), unless a different applicable time controls. Ordinary paper filing requires clerk receipt by scheduled closure. Rule 25(a)(2)(A)(ii) separately permits timely mailing or qualifying dispatch of a brief or appendix. Motions do not automatically receive that exception. Confirm actual local instructions, permitted channels and separate service proof.