New York Judicial Departments: Structure and Appellate Division Appeals

New York’s Appellate Division is divided into four judicial departments, each covering a defined group of counties and serving as the main appeals court for that region. Article VI, Section 4 of the New York State Constitution creates these four departments, which together span all 62 counties.¹ Which department you deal with depends entirely on the county your case comes from.

What the Four Departments Do

Each Appellate Division department sits between the trial courts and the Court of Appeals, which is New York’s highest court. The First and Second Departments each have seven Appellate Division justices; the Third and Fourth have five each.¹ They review both the facts and the law when a party challenges a trial court decision.

The departments also handle work that has nothing to do with appeals. Each one admits attorneys to the New York bar within its region and disciplines lawyers who violate professional conduct rules. The Appellate Division can censure, suspend, or remove any attorney found guilty of professional misconduct, fraud, or conduct that undermines the justice system, and it can revoke admission based on misrepresentations made during the application process. Each department investigates grievances and, when warranted, can require an attorney to pay restitution to harmed clients or reimburse the state’s Lawyers’ Fund for Client Protection.

First Department

The First Department is the smallest geographically but one of the busiest appellate courts in the country. It covers two counties: New York County (Manhattan) and Bronx County. The courthouse is at 27 Madison Avenue in Manhattan.²

Manhattan’s role as a financial center means this department handles an outsized share of complex commercial litigation. Cases routed to the Commercial Division of the Supreme Court in New York County must involve at least $500,000 in controversy, not counting punitive damages, interest, or attorney fees.³ For cases seeking equitable or declaratory relief instead of money damages, the threshold is measured by the value of the benefit sought or the injury being prevented, whichever is greater.

The First Department also admits roughly 3,000 new attorneys to the bar each year and oversees attorney discipline in Manhattan and the Bronx.²

Second Department

The Second Department covers ten downstate counties and contains slightly more than half the state’s total population in just over 8% of its land area.⁴ The courthouse sits in Brooklyn Heights in Kings County. The counties are:

Kings (Brooklyn)
Queens
Richmond (Staten Island)
Nassau
Suffolk
Westchester
Dutchess
Orange
Rockland
Putnam

The region runs from the dense neighborhoods of Brooklyn and Queens to the more rural stretches of Dutchess and Orange Counties.⁴ Matrimonial disputes, personal injury claims, real estate litigation, and zoning challenges make up significant portions of the docket.

If you’re appealing in the Second Department, electronic filing through NYSCEF is mandatory for any matter that originated as an e-filed case in Supreme Court, Surrogate’s Court, or the Court of Claims in any of the ten counties. It’s also mandatory for Article 78 proceedings started directly in the Second Department. E-filing is not yet available for Family Court, criminal, or attorney discipline matters. Self-represented litigants and attorneys who lack the necessary equipment or technical knowledge are exempt, though self-represented parties can opt in voluntarily.⁵

Third Department

The Third Department is based in Albany and covers 28 counties across the eastern and northern portions of the state, stretching from the Canadian border down through the lower Catskills and from the Vermont and Massachusetts borders west to the Finger Lakes.⁶ The counties are:

Albany, Broome, Chemung, Chenango, Clinton, Columbia, Cortland
Delaware, Essex, Franklin, Fulton, Greene, Hamilton
Madison, Montgomery, Otsego
Rensselaer, St. Lawrence, Saratoga, Schenectady, Schoharie, Schuyler, Sullivan
Tioga, Tompkins, Ulster, Warren, Washington

Because Albany is the state capital, the Third Department hears a disproportionate share of appeals from state agency decisions. Workers’ compensation disputes, unemployment insurance denials, professional licensing challenges, and other administrative law matters funnel through this court.⁶ That concentration gives the court real influence over how state agencies operate.

Fourth Department

The Fourth Department covers 22 counties across central and western New York. Its courthouse is the M. Dolores Denman Courthouse at 50 East Avenue in Rochester.⁷ The counties are:⁸

Allegany, Cattaraugus, Cayuga, Chautauqua
Erie, Genesee, Herkimer, Jefferson
Lewis, Livingston, Monroe, Niagara
Oneida, Onondaga, Ontario, Orleans, Oswego
Seneca, Steuben, Wayne, Wyoming, Yates

The region includes Buffalo (Erie County), Rochester (Monroe County), and Syracuse (Onondaga County) alongside large stretches of agricultural and rural land. One procedural quirk to know: if you want oral argument in the Fourth Department, you must request it on the cover of your brief when you file. If no brief is filed on a party’s behalf, no oral argument is permitted unless the court orders otherwise.⁹

How To Appeal to the Appellate Division

Knowing your department is the first step. The actual mechanics of bringing an appeal have strict deadlines, and the courts enforce them without much sympathy for missed dates.

Deadlines

You have 30 days to file and serve a notice of appeal after you’re served with a copy of the judgment or order and written notice of its entry. If you served the judgment yourself, the 30-day clock starts from the date of your service.

Once the notice is filed, you generally have six months to perfect the appeal, which means assembling and filing the full record, your brief, and all supporting materials. Miss that six-month window and the appeal is automatically deemed abandoned and dismissed. The court does not send a warning first.¹⁰ Shorter deadlines apply in some situations: assigned counsel in Family Court appeals must perfect within 60 days of receiving the transcript, and assigned counsel in criminal appeals has 120 days.⁹

If you need more time, the parties can stipulate to extend the perfection deadline by up to 60 days. After that, you can request one more letter extension of up to 30 additional days. Anything beyond that requires a formal motion.¹⁰

The Notice of Appeal

The notice itself is short, but it must identify three things: the party taking the appeal, the specific judgment or order being appealed (or the specific part of it), and the court to which the appeal is being taken. You serve the notice on the opposing party and file it with the office where the original judgment or order was entered.¹¹

The Record on Appeal

The record is the collection of documents the Appellate Division reviews. For an appeal from a final judgment, it includes the notice of appeal, the judgment roll, a corrected transcript of the proceedings (if a trial or hearing was held), relevant exhibits, any other reviewable orders, and any written opinions in the case. For an appeal from an interlocutory order, the record consists of the notice of appeal, the order itself, the transcript if there is one, and the papers the order was based on.

How you assemble and file the record depends on the department and the method you use. The reproduced full record method requires printing the entire record. The appendix method lets you include only the portions necessary to evaluate the issues raised, though the excerpts must not be misleading due to missing context. In the First and Second Departments, appellants using the appendix method must subpoena the original record from the trial court clerk. In the Third and Fourth Departments, appellants instead submit a digital copy of the complete record.¹⁰

Costs and Fee Waivers

The county clerk charges $65 to file a notice of appeal, and the Appellate Division clerk charges $315 to file the record on appeal. Both fees are due in advance.¹² You’ll also need to budget for transcript preparation, which typically runs $4.50 to $7.50 per page depending on the court reporter, and for printing the record and briefs if hard copies are required.

If you can’t afford these costs, you can apply for poor person relief under CPLR 1101. You’ll need to file an affidavit or affirmation detailing your income, assets, and real property, and explaining why you lack sufficient means to pay. The court also wants to see enough facts about the case to evaluate whether the appeal has merit. If you’re represented by a legal aid organization or nonprofit legal services provider, fees are waived automatically without a motion; the attorney simply certifies that a financial eligibility determination has been made.¹³

Going Beyond the Appellate Division

If you lose at the Appellate Division and want to go further, the Court of Appeals is New York’s highest court. Getting there is harder. In most situations, you need the court’s permission.

You can appeal as of right in a few specific situations. The most common is when at least two Appellate Division justices dissented on a question of law in favor of the party taking the appeal.¹⁴ You also have an appeal as of right when the case directly involves the interpretation of the state or federal constitution, or when the only question on appeal is whether a statute is constitutional.

For everything else, you must move for leave to appeal. The motion can be made either to the Appellate Division or directly to the Court of Appeals, and must be filed within 30 days of being served with the Appellate Division’s order and notice of entry. Your supporting papers need to identify the specific legal questions you want reviewed and explain why the Court of Appeals should take the case. In criminal matters, you must also state that no other application for leave has been made.

The Court of Appeals is discretionary for most civil and criminal appeals, meaning it picks cases that raise significant legal questions. Simply disagreeing with the outcome at the Appellate Division isn’t enough. The strongest applications identify an unsettled legal question, a conflict between departments, or a ruling with broad implications beyond the individual case.

1
Justia. New York Constitution Article VI Section 4
2
New York State Unified Court System. Appellate Division – First Judicial Department – About the Court
3
Legal Information Institute. N.Y. Comp. Codes R. and Regs. Tit. 22 Section 202.70 – Rules of the Commercial Division of the Supreme Court
4
New York State Unified Court System. Appellate Division – Second Judicial Department – About the Court
5
New York State Unified Court System. Appellate Division – Second Judicial Department – Electronic Filing
6
New York State Unified Court System. About the Appellate Division, Third Department
7
New York State Unified Court System. Appellate Division, Fourth Department – Directions
8
New York State Unified Court System. New York State Judicial Departments and Districts
9
New York State Unified Court System. Perfecting an Appeal
10
Legal Information Institute. N.Y. Comp. Codes R. and Regs. Tit. 22 Section 1250.9
11
New York State Senate. New York Civil Practice Law and Rules CVP Section 5515 – Taking an Appeal; Notice of Appeal
12
New York State Unified Court System. New York State Filing Fees
13
New York State Senate. New York Civil Practice Law and Rules Section 1101 – Motion to Waive Costs, Fees, and Expenses
14
New York State Senate. New York Civil Practice Law and Rules CVP Section 5601 – Appeals to the Court of Appeals as of Right