{"id":24676,"date":"2015-06-26T11:50:48","date_gmt":"2015-06-26T16:50:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/?p=24676"},"modified":"2020-01-21T16:26:08","modified_gmt":"2020-01-21T22:26:08","slug":"persuading-people-who-dont-want-to-be-persuaded","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/2015\/06\/persuading-people-who-dont-want-to-be-persuaded\/","title":{"rendered":"Persuading People Who Don\u2019t Want to Be Persuaded"},"content":{"rendered":"

I just finished a recent book by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner. If the names Levitt and Dubner sound familiar, it\u2019s because you may have heard of their popular (and interesting) Freakonomics<\/em> books (here<\/a> and here<\/a>). In the book I just finished, Think Like a Freak<\/a><\/em>, Levitt and Dubner set out to teach readers how to \u201cretrain [their] brain[s]\u201d so that they, too, can \u201cthink like a freak.\u201d The book defines what it means to \u201cthink like a freak\u201d (it\u2019s not a bad thing; it\u2019s critical and curious thinking with a twist), and offers its step-by-step guide. But one chapter stuck out to me as particularly relevant to lawyers (and law students): How to Persuade People Who Don\u2019t Want to Be Persuaded.<\/p>\n

Now, the easy thought here is that this advice will apply to brief writing. And, yes, that\u2019s true, but I think we can think of persuasion more broadly. Even a lawyer\u2019s \u201cobjective\u201d work has an element of persuasion to it. A demand letter must \u201cpersuade\u201d its reader to comply; an internal office memo must \u201cpersuade\u201d its reader that the analysis is the correct (or at least best) one.<\/p>\n

So, what do Levitt and Dubner say?<\/p>\n

First, we must \u201cunderstand how hard persuasion will be\u2014and why\u201d (168). The two suggest that some people you might have to persuade really don\u2019t know much about your topic and haven\u2019t thought in depth about it. (You, on the other hand, have likely thought very deeply about your topic.) For these people, their initial responses and opinions are \u201clikely based less on fact and logic than on ideology and herd thinking\u201d (172). They may, for example, have seen or heard a headline about your topic on a quick perusal of their favorite website or news network and have simply adopted that view. (Note: you cannot tell someone in this group that his thinking in based more on \u201cideology and herd thinking\u201d than on \u201cfact and logic\u201d; he\u2019d never agree. As Levitt and Dubner say, such a person \u201cis operating from a set of biases he cannot even see\u201d (172).)<\/p>\n

Then there are those people who have more confidence in their knowledge and tend to believe they are right (even when they\u2019re not).<\/p>\n

Both groups are hard to persuade: the former because \u201cit can be hard to get their attention long enough to prompt a change\u201d (172), and the latter because those are people who are heavily invested in their own opinions\u2014and heavily invested in maintaining that they are right.<\/p>\n

Lawyers do understand that persuasion is hard and often we\u2019re dealing more with the second group: the ones who have some knowledge about a topic and are heavily invested in their own opinions and beliefs of being right. With either group, Levitt and Dunbar suggest the following:<\/p>\n