Storytelling for Lawyers

Storytelling for Lawyers

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ISBN 978-0-19-539663-8 (paperback)
ISBN 978-0-19-539662-1 (hardback)

1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper

For Anthony G. Amsterdam,
with gratitude and admiration
.

For my family, with love
.

Acknowledgment

1. Introduction

I. Lawyers Are Storytellers

II. Legal Arguments Are Stories in Disguise

III. The Parts of a Story

IV. Movies and Closing Arguments

2. Plotting I: The Basics

I. What Is Plot?

II. Plot Structure in Two Movies

3. Plotting II: Plot Structure in a Closing Argument to a Jury in a Complex Torts Case

I. The “Backstory”

II. Annotated Excerpts from Gerry Spence's Closing Argument on Behalf of Karen Silkwood

III. Concluding Observations

4. Character Lessons: Character, Character Development, and Characterization

I. Introduction: Why Emphasize Movie Characters in Legal Storytelling?

II. What Is Character, and Why Is It Important to Legal Storytellers?

III. Flat and Round Characters and Static and Changing Characters—
High Noon
Revisited

IV. Techniques of Character Development and Characterization: Excerpts from Tobias Wolff's
This Boy's Life

5. Characters, Character Development, and Characterization in a Closing Argument to a Jury in a Complex Criminal Case

I. The “Backstory”

II. Annotated Excerpts from Jeremiah Donovan's Closing Argument on Behalf of Louis Failla

III. Concluding Observations

6. Style Matters: How to Use Voice, Point of View, Details and Images, Rhythms of Language, Scene and Summary, and Quotations and Transcripts in Effective Legal Storytelling

I. Backstory: Grading Law School Examinations

II. Preliminary Note: “Voice” and “Style”

III. Voice and Rhythm: “Staying on the Surface”

IV. The Use of Scene and Summary: “Showing and Telling”

V. Telling in Different Voices

VI. Perspective or Point of View

VII. Several Functions of Perspective: How Does Perspective (Point of View) Work, and What Work Does It Do?

VIII. Concluding Observations

7. A Sense of Place: Settings, Descriptions, and Environments

I. Introduction

II. Dangerous Territory: Contrasting Settings Evoking Danger and Instability in Joan Didion's “The White Album” and the Judicial Opinion in a Rape Case

III. More Dangerous Places Where Bad Things Happen: Use of Physical Descriptions and Factual Details to Create Complex Environments in W. G. Sebald's
The Emigrants
and the Petitioners' Briefs in Two Coerced Confession Cases

IV. Settings and Environment as Villains and Villainy in the Mitigation Stories of Kathryn Harrison's
While They Slept
and the Petitioner's Brief in
Eddings v. Oklahoma

V. Concluding Observations

8. Narrative Time: A Brief Exploration

I. Introduction

II. The Ordering of Discourse Time

III. Concluding Observations

9. Final Observations: Beginnings and Endings

Notes

Index

FROM
2003
THROUGH
2008 I collaborated with Anthony G. Amsterdam preparing instructional materials for the Narrative Persuasion Institute. In this book I draw on these materials. I am grateful to Tony for his encouragement and support enabling me to write this book.

Storytelling for Lawyers

Somewhere along the way one discovers that what one has
to tell is not nearly so telling as the telling itself
.

—
HENRY MILLER
, “
REFLECTIONS ON
WRITING
,” in T
HE
W
ISDOM OF THE
H
EART

A good story and a well-formed argument are different
natural kinds.… It has been claimed that one is a
refinement or abstraction from the other. But this must
be either false or true in only the most unenlightening
way. They function differently… and the structure of a
well-formed logical argument differs radically from that of
a well-wrought story
.

—
JEROME BRUNER
, A
CTUAL
M
INDS
,
P
OSSIBLE
W
ORLDS

Some years ago I practiced law. Most of my time was spent telling stories. I spoke to insurance adjusters and parole officers, to attorneys representing clients with adversarial interests, to government bureaucrats. And of course, I told stories in court. Typically, I told simple plot-driven, fact-based narratives. Of course, I tried to make my stories factually meticulous and accurate. But I constantly ordered and reordered events as I reconstructed the past to
serve my clients' purposes. Usually, I depicted my clients sympathetically, even when I did not believe this was their true “character.” When it served my purposes, I made the plots of my stories vivid and compelling. Sometimes, however, I flattened or obscured events, or sped up narrative time, or softened reality with intentional shifts from one genre into another. Other times, I slowed down time, focused on specific sequences of crucial images, or employed forms that heightened the impact of a story.

I learned to watch and listen to how my audience listened to me, and I would respond to their concerns, reshaping my stories to fit the shape of their imaginings. I recall the novelist John Irving instructing students at the Iowa Writers' Workshop that effective storytelling requires “ruthlessness” and commitment to constructing a coherent and seamless world. It is apparent to me that successful lawyers are at ease with their storytelling roles of depicting “The World According To” in the battle of competing stories inside and outside the courtroom. And I now believe that many of the lessons I learned from creative writers of fiction and nonfiction are as important to successful law practice as any doctrine.

Make no mistake about it—lawyers are storytellers. It is how we make our livings. In law practice effective storytelling is often outcome-determinative; sometimes it is literally a matter of life or death. Of course, storytelling practice in law is also unlike the work of other popular storytellers. Lawyers are ethical and truthful storytellers; imagination is informed, shaped, and limited by evidence. The lawyers' voice and persona are different; the rules of, and constraints upon, formal legal storytelling are explicit and unlike those of other popular storytellers. Further, lawyers often do not tell complete stories, typically leaving it to others (judges, juries, decision makers) to complete the tales and inscribe codas of meaning. Nevertheless, as lawyers we have much to learn from studying the craft of storytelling and applying these lessons to our legal practice. As professional storytellers we can do our jobs better the more consciously we deploy the tools of the storyteller's craft.

All arguments, at any level or in any type of practice, are built upon arrangements of the facts of a particular case. These facts are shaped into stories carefully fitted with legal rules and precedent. It is impossible to make
any
legal argument without telling
some
stories about the facts and about the law.

Unlike an analytical argument, the structure and internal components of a “story” are never pointed out or made explicit to a listener or reader. The
“verisimilitude”—or lifelikeness—crucial to effective storytelling demands that the audience not be distracted by, or even be aware of, the technical craft that shapes the material, lest the storyteller risk breaking the story's “spell” over its audience.

Nevertheless, as storytellers have understood for millennia, there
is
a powerful and well-defined narrative architecture or structure in stories. There are clear principles that inform storytelling practice. This is no less true for the types of stories that lawyers tell. As Henry Miller observes, and as any effective litigation attorney knows, the truth of a story is in its telling. Likewise, a story's form is inseparable from its content; the two are inextricable.