Appeals
Reviewed for legal accuracy on October 30, 2025
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Learn what it means to appeal a case, about the general procedure, and where you can get more of information needed for a successful appeal from Washington’s Administrative Office of the Courts Self-Help Washington.
If you disagree with a court’s final order in your case, you can appeal it. An appeal asks a higher court to change the decision of the court that made the order you disagree with (the lower court). This is different from asking the same court to change a final order.
We also use the word appeal to describe the process when you disagree with a federal or state agency’s decision.
Try to get help from a lawyer to find out if an appeal is worth the cost and time in your case. An appeal can cost a lot. And you generally can’t give the higher court new evidence, so you must have a good legal argument.
If you decide to appeal a decision after consulting with a lawyer, there are many court rules and deadlines to learn. Washington’s Administrative Office of the Courts Self-Help Washington has detailed information about appeals from and to different types of courts, including appealing from:
- Courts of Limited Jurisdiction (District Court and Municipal Court which often handle misdemeanors, infractions, traffic tickets, and small civil cases) with links to the Rules for Appeal from Courts of Limited Jurisdiction.
- Superior Court (general trial-level court)
- Washington Court of Appeals (with divisions in Seattle, Tacoma, and Spokane).
- Washington Supreme Court (the highest court in the state with discretionary review). Self-Help Washington has information about how to figure out if you should file a Motion for Discretionary Review or a Petition for Review with the Supreme Court.
Step-by-step
Here are the basic steps for an appeal. Your specific steps and deadlines will depend on the type of case and court.
File a notice of appeal
The notice of appeal tells the court and the other side that you disagree with the court’s final order and are asking a higher court to change it. You usually must do this within 30 days of the decision.
Gather the record
You must collect all the documents, evidence, and transcripts from your original trial. This is the “record” you will send to the higher court for review. You usually must pay a fee for this.
A transcript is a written recording of what happened and was said at a court hearing or trial.
Write briefs
Both sides write their arguments in legal documents called “briefs.” The person appealing (the appellant) writes about why they think the first court made a mistake. The other side (the appellee) writes about why they think the decision was right. If you must write your own brief, you should do so by referring to the parts of your court record that help your argument. You should also try to talk to a lawyer.
Oral Arguments (sometimes)
Sometimes, the higher court will ask the lawyers to come in and present their case in person, at a hearing, in front of a judge or a panel of judges. This is called "oral argument." This isn’t always needed.
If you must go to a hearing to do oral argument, you should try to talk to a lawyer who specializes in appeals. The experience is more formal than what you may have had at the trial court level.
Appeals court decides
The higher court looks at everything: the record, the briefs, and any oral arguments. Then the judges decide whether to keep the original decision is the same (called “upholding” the original decision), change it, or send it back to the lower court to be looked at again (called “remanding” the decision). The higher court can uphold some parts of a decision and change or remand others.
Further appeals
If the higher court's decision still isn’t what one side wants, that side might try to take the case to an even higher court. But these higher courts, like the Washington Supreme Court or the U.S. Supreme Court, rarely take cases. They choose cases that are important or involve big legal questions. And they have still different rules from the courts below them.