Law Commons^™

“All We Have To Decide Is What To Do With The Time Given To Us”: Using Concepts Of Narrative Time To Draft More Persuasive Legal Arguments, Jennifer Sheppard

Marquette Law Review

When taught to draft a statement of facts or a statement of the case, law students and new lawyers are often told to “tell a story” and that chronological order is usually the best organizational strategy to use when telling that story. While much has been written in recent years on how to draft a story in the legal context, little scholarship is devoted to how to draft a story using chronology or how a lawyer can shape and manipulate time within a story to better advocate for a client. Legal scholars seem to think that the use of chronology …

What's Your Story? Every Famous Mark Has One: Persuasion In Trademark Opposition Briefs, Candace Hays

Marquette Intellectual Property Law Review

A key contention of legal writing scholarship is that the legal resolution is rooted in storytelling. The law consists of an endless telling and retelling of stories. Clients tell stories to their lawyers, who must figure out how to frame their client’s narrative into a legal context. Lawyers retell their clients’ stories to judges using pleadings, motions, and legal briefs. Judges and administrators retell these stories in the form of an opinion or verdict.

Storytelling in the legal context is an important element of persuasion. For the purpose of this comment, legal storytelling is defined as the use of fiction-writing …