Frankly, I don't think her practice experience is all that extensive where it counts, i.e. appeals. In her response to the senate questionnaire, she only notes 7 appellate arguments in her entire career, none in the Supreme Court and only 4 in circuit courts (the other three being state). She's only participated in 3 cert petitions, none of which were granted.

Mr. Gowder: I respectfully disagree that "where it counts" is limited to appeals. Every client whom I've ever represented preferred that I win in the trial court, and if possible that I do so in a way which ensured that the other side would not appeal. If you are of the impression that the only practicing lawyers able to keep from drooling down their chests are those whom, like John Roberts, have specialized in appellate law, you've been badly misled. Fully a third or more of us whose practices are mostly in the trial courts can avoid drooling for hours at a time, and a few even for days.

And when, for example, one is trying to permit the casting of electoral votes for, and the inauguration of, the forty-third President of the United States to go forward, and one has already won one's case in the federal district court and the Fifth Circuit against the parties trying to stop those things, then obtaining a "cert. denied" is a perfect, total victory — not a defeat. This was certainly appreciated by nationally famous constitutional law scholar Sandy Levinson of the University of Texas School of Law, whose efforts to get that petition for certiorari granted Ms. Miers so ably frustrated, quoted last week as saying: "The only thing to infer from this [case] is that she's a good lawyer."