The verdict is not the end.
Appeals are won on the record and the law - preserved errors, misapplied guidelines, evidence that should never have come in. It is a different fight, and it needs appellate counsel.
Netflix told the story. The defense was ours.
When Shonda Rhimes built Inventing Anna, the defense at its center was Todd Spodek’s - argued for the so-called fake heiress in a Manhattan courtroom long before Arian Moayed of Succession played him on screen. What 320 million hours of viewers watched is the method every client of this firm gets, in every federal district.
The record, dated and sourced.
How your case unfolds.
THE FULL PROCESS →Risk-free, in person or by phone. Ask anything, for as long as it takes. Strategy starts the same day.
Fourteen days to notice, a record to master - we move the moment judgment enters, and preserve everything the next court will need.
Brief the two issues that can win - the miscalculated range, the suppression ruling - and argue them like the remand depends on it, because it does.
A federal appeal is not a second trial - it is a legal attack on what went wrong in the first one: rulings on suppression, jury instructions, guideline calculations, sufficiency of the evidence. Deadlines are unforgiving and the writing is everything. We take appeals from our own trials and from convictions handled by other firms.
The record is closed. The fight is not.
An appeal is not a second trial - it is a hunt through a closed record for the error that mattered. Preservation decides half of it: what trial counsel objected to, what the judge ruled, what the transcript actually says. We read every page, because the winning issue is usually on one nobody flagged.
Resentencing is a real remedy.
Guideline miscalculations are the most commonly reversed federal error - a wrong loss figure, a misapplied enhancement, a criminal-history point that never belonged. Win the calculation, and the case returns for resentencing with the range corrected. Years move on remand; we have watched it happen.
What wins upstairs.
Suppression rulings, jury instructions, sufficiency, and procedurally unreasonable sentences - appellate courts reverse on process, not sympathy. Section 2255 adds ineffective assistance and new evidence when direct appeal closes. The craft is picking the two issues that can win and writing them like they must.
Deadlines that forgive nothing.
Fourteen days to notice a direct appeal after judgment. One year for a §2255 motion from finality. Certificates of appealability gate habeas appeals, and plain-error review punishes what trial counsel failed to preserve. The Sentencing Commission’s retroactive amendments - like the zero-point-offender change - open resentencing windows that close quietly. Post-conviction practice is a calendar first and an argument second.
What to send us with the transcript.
The docket sheet, the PSR, trial counsel’s file, and your own notes on what happened that the record missed - ineffective-assistance claims are built from the gap between the two. Flag every objection you remember being overruled. And move fast on new evidence: Brady material surfaces in co-defendants’ cases, FOIA returns, and cooperators’ later testimony, and each has its own clock.
Know who is on the other side.
The first 72 hours decide the next 72 weeks.
No interviews, no consents, no explaining, no deleting. The words said in hour zero are the exhibits at trial. Write down what was asked and by whom - then stop.
Privilege attaches, facts get mapped while memory is fresh, documents get preserved the right way, and nobody in your orbit talks to agents unrepresented again.
We contact the government as your counsel: target, subject, or witness gets confirmed, deadlines get calendared, and the defense - not the investigation - sets the tempo.
Todd A. Spodek is a second-generation trial lawyer whose defense of Anna Delvey became Netflix's Inventing Anna. He appears on Fox News and CNN as a legal analyst, authored "My Advice to Diddy" in The Spectator, and is quoted by the Associated Press when the biggest federal cases break. The record behind the profile: a complete acquittal in a $26M money-laundering trial, RICO charges carrying a 10-year minimum dismissed, and 6 months on a $12M Ponzi case.
Why this firm.
Five decades of federal courtrooms. Whatever the government has charged, this firm has defended it before.
No allegiance to U.S. Attorneys, agents, or agencies. The client is the only constituency.
Every district in the country, one client portal - documents, invoices, counsel, in real time.
We decline more federal matters than we accept - and every accepted case gets the whole bench.
See who fights for you before you ever call.
Who we are, how we work, and why clients nationwide trust us with their future - in under a minute.
On the record, on the wire.
Get ahead of the case.
Answered within 24 hours, guaranteed. Some stories are better told out loud -
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