FOIA Appeal — Paid Consultation on Appealing an Agency Denial
A paid consultation with Sherrod Seward, Esq. on the administrative appeal — the step most requesters either skip or spend badly.
The administrative appeal is the step that decides how strong a lawsuit would be, and it is the step people most often waste by simply restating the original request. An appeal is an argument that the agency made a specific legal error. You will leave the call knowing which errors are actually available on your response letter, what the appeal has to say to preserve them, and the date it has to be in by.
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Request the consultation
Six fields. About a minute.
Bring the call one of these
- You have a denial letter and a deadline you are not certain of.
- You do not know whether to appeal or to sue.
- Your appeal was denied and you are deciding what happens next.
- The agency missed its own deadline and never responded at all.
- You want the appeal written so that it survives if this ends up in court.
Why the appeal is worth doing properly
Two things happen in an administrative appeal that do not happen anywhere else. The first is exhaustion: working through the agency's own appeal process is ordinarily how a requester becomes entitled to have a court look at the matter at all. The second is that the appeal is where the record for any later case gets built — the arguments made there are the arguments a court sees, and the ones not made there are much harder to raise afterwards. An appeal written as a complaint about the outcome does neither. An appeal written as a legal argument about a specific error does both.
This office has been the plaintiff, not only the drafter
Law Offices of Sherrod Seward, PLLC v. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services
No. 3:25-cv-00057 (W.D.N.C.), filed January 2025
This office has been the plaintiff in a Freedom of Information Act case, not only the drafter of the request. When an agency declined to produce records, the firm filed suit in its own name under 5 U.S.C. 552 to compel production.
A pending matter is described here as a fact about this office's own experience. It is not a result, it does not predict anything about any other case, and every case is decided on its own record. Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome.
How it runs
- Send the enquiryThe form below. Six fields, about a minute.
- Pay the consultation fee$500, on the firm's secure payment page. Credited in full against the fee for the engagement if this office is engaged on the matter.
- The consultationThe call itself. Bring the request, the response letter and the envelope — deadlines run from what the paper says.
- A written summaryWhat was decided, what the next step is, and the date it has to happen by.
Watch first
Questions people actually ask
What do I actually get for the fee?
The $500 is the fee for the consultation itself and for the written summary that follows it. It is not a retainer, and it does not include drafting or filing a FOIA request, an administrative appeal, a licence application, a delisting petition, a federal court complaint, a trademark application, a response to a USPTO office action, or a post-registration maintenance filing - each of those is separately scoped and separately quoted. Government, agency and court filing fees, any agency search, review or duplication fees, and any USPTO filing fees, are not included and are payable to the government, not to this office.
Is this legal advice?
The consultation is. This page is not — it is general information about federal practice, and reading it creates no relationship with this office. Sending this form does not create an attorney-client relationship. No attorney-client relationship is formed until this office and you have signed a written engagement agreement.
Can you tell me what my chances are?
You will get a candid assessment of what your record supports and where it is thin, which is the useful version of that question. What you will not get is a percentage. Every matter is decided on its own record by a government officer or a judge, and prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome.
What happens if you cannot help?
You will be told so on the call, and told where the matter actually belongs. That happens often enough to be worth saying out loud.
How long do I have to appeal?
The statute sets a floor of not less than 90 days from the date of the adverse determination, and an individual agency's own FOIA regulation may allow more. Never calendar from the floor alone, and never assume the agency's rule is more generous — the operative deadline is the one in that agency's own regulation, and reading it is part of the call.
The agency never answered at all. Do I still appeal?
Sometimes the better move is not to appeal. Where an agency fails to make a determination within the statutory time limit, a requester may be treated as having exhausted the administrative remedies, which can open the courthouse door without an appeal. Whether that applies to you depends on what the agency did and when, and it is a question worth getting right rather than guessing.