What an appeal court does
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An appeal court reviews decisions made by a lower court to determine whether the law was applied correctly or whether a significant legal error affected the outcome, rather than generally re-examining every factual detail from scratch, something that becomes clearer with experience, as is often the case in practice.
Appeals are usually limited to specific grounds, such as an alleged error in how the law was interpreted or applied, and are not simply a chance to retry a case because one side is unhappy with the original result, though this can vary between jurisdictions, which few people stop to consider.
Because appellate decisions often clarify how the law should be interpreted going forward, they can carry significance well beyond the individual case, shaping how similar disputes are resolved by lower courts in the future, a pattern that recurs in many contexts, particularly when scrutiny is otherwise limited, even when the stakes seem relatively low.