Amber Heard got some top notch lawyers for her appeal and it shows in many ways in the brief that they've filed on her behalf. But they were also unnecessarily handicapped by trying to cram SO MANY complaints into the 55-page limit; it means they were unable to devote the time and space to flesh out any of the arguments because they spent so much of the brief talking about throwaway issues that have no chance of winning. The brief is extremely distilled and organized - it has to be to cover 16 assignments of error in the space allocated - but the writers made editorial decisions to omit certain things that may come back to bite them. If nothing else, they've given Ben Chew a very big opening to highlight the weaknesses in their case because rather than anticipating and addressing them, Team Amber has simply not mentioned them. They've put their credibility on the line and they may regret not addressing the evidence of the hoax until after Johnny talks about it first. As with Johnny's opening brief, I'll be getting into the more detailed legal analysis after the response briefs are filed. But for now, there is nothing in this brief that suggests to me that Amber has a particularly strong chance of winning her appeal, and the strategy of shotgunning complaints at the court is one with a high potential to backfire. Both opening briefs are available for download here: https://andreaburkhart.com/documents 00:00 Intro 00:45 The first impression from the table of contents - there's too much crammed in 02:14 The problem with this approach: In law, the devil is in the details 04:10 This brief gives us some well-crafted issue statements 05:30 The Table of Contents tells us what issues they are prioritizing 07:04 The lack of time/space on their issues requires them to take analytical shortcuts 08:36 The Statement of Facts says a lot by what it omits 10:55 Smart choice to organize arguments by remedy each would provide 13:36 No deep dive on the merits yet, but I don't think she's going to win 14:12 A peculiar choice to invoke a politicized hypothetical 16:36 Admission by omission: Where's the harmless error analysis? 21:03 Bottom line First Look at Johnny Depp's opening brief: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9xrC83JoGiE