Storytelling for Lawyers

An excellent primer on narrative theory for lawyer-storytellers has now appeared. I refer to Philip N. Meyer’s recently published Storytelling for Lawyers (Oxford University Press, 2014), which is available in Kindle, hardcover and paperback versions.

Meyer convincingly makes the point that much of what lawyers do is storytelling. Whether they are presenting cases in the courtroom or representing clients in contract negotiations, lawyers tell stories. Furthermore, a lawyer’s success depends to a surprising extent on his or her skills as a storyteller.

Meyer suggests lawyers’ stories are relatively straightforward and more like those in Hollywood movies than those in literary novels. However, all stories—simple or complex—include a setting, characters, a plot, a point of view, and a narrative voice. Meyer demonstrates how conscious attention to each of these components can improve a story.

I found especially interesting Meyer’s observation that careful crafting of a story’s beginning greatly improves the likelihood of a story’s conclusion being effective and convincing. He illustrates this point with insightful commentaries on the closing arguments offered by Jeremiah Donovan on behalf of Louis Failla and Gerry Spence on behalf of Karen Silkwood.

Overall, Meyer’s book is a great story about lawyers telling stories. He brings his lawyer-storytellers to life and critiques their narrative efforts with great delight. I welcomed his reminder that the best lawyers can be and are artists.

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The Sources of Anti-Gay Sentiment in Uganda

American politicians and journalists have sharply criticized Uganda’s apparent hostility toward gay men and lesbians. When in February Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni signed into law a bill imposing harsh criminal penalties for homosexual acts, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry criticized the Ugandan law as a violation of international human rights. When a tabloid in Kampala, the nation’s largest city, published a list of “Uganda’s 200 Top Gays,” American newspapers reported that this mass “outing” led those on the list to fear for their lives and to seek desperately to flee the country.

In response to this criticism, the Ugandan government characterized the political comments and journalistic reports as disturbingly arrogant. Once again, the U.S. seemed to be trying to control Ugandan lawmaking and public opinion, the government said. Museveni himself insisted “outsiders” should leave his nation alone and vowed he would not give in. “If the West does not want to work with us because of homosexuals,” Museveni said, “then we have enough space to ourselves here.”

Is the dispute simply a matter of American support for gay rights colliding with Ugandan homophobia? As is usually the case in an international dispute of this sort, the controversy involves more than the purported enlightenment of the West on the one hand and the narrow-mindedness in the developing world on the other. There is ample evidence that American evangelical Christians heavily influenced Uganda’s political and religious leaders, who as a result of this influence turned on the nation’s gay men and lesbians.

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Polarization or Social Control in Metropolitan Milwaukee?

As a person who has always considered the City of Milwaukee to be home, I find Craig Gilbert’s ongoing study of political polarization in the metropolitan area to be both thorough and illuminating. His research indicates that when it comes to Republican and Democratic voting patterns, the area has become more polarized than any area outside of the American South. What’s more, the political polarization very strikingly correlates with race, ethnicity, education, and population density. Republican voters reside largely in middle and upper-class suburbs in Waukesha, Washington, and Ozaukee counties, while the impoverished and working poor reside and vote in the City of Milwaukee’s Democratic inner-city.

When we reflect on what has come to be, it is important that we not take the polarization to be simply a naturally occurring phenomenon and thereby overlook the political agency involved, that is, the way some socio-economic groups attempt to contain and control other socio-economic groups. Polarization has taken place in part because local and state governments have used law and legal arrangements to push socio-economic groups apart, to assign poorer citizens to certain areas, and to reduce the clout of these citizens at the polls.

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