{"id":6858,"date":"2009-08-28T15:53:56","date_gmt":"2009-08-28T20:53:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/?p=6858"},"modified":"2009-08-28T15:53:56","modified_gmt":"2009-08-28T20:53:56","slug":"storytelling-in-appellate-brief-writing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/2009\/08\/storytelling-in-appellate-brief-writing\/","title":{"rendered":"Storytelling in Appellate Brief Writing"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/jillclardy\/2566241384\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-thumbnail wp-image-6860\" title=\"Steinbeck quote\" src=\"http:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/08\/2566241384_4264b1f0f3-150x150.jpg\" alt=\"2566241384_4264b1f0f3\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" \/><\/a>At the end of July, both Professor Michael Smith and I attended the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.lclark.edu\/law\/programs\/legal_analysis_and_writing\/applied_legal_storytelling_conference\/\">Applied Legal Storytelling Conference<\/a> at Lewis and Clark Law School in Portland, Oregon.\u00a0 The conference was entitled \u201cChapter 2:\u00a0 Once Upon a Legal Story\u201d and focused on storytelling in \u201cways that will directly and tangibly benefit law students (i.e. future lawyers) and legal practitioners (i.e. former law students).\u201d\u00a0 The presentations I attended addressed ways to use storytelling to create a stronger narrative theme in a case and how to handle the ethical issues in storytelling.<\/p>\n<p>One of the most intriguing presentations was Professor Kenneth Chestek\u2019s talk \u201cJudging by the Numbers:\u00a0 an Empirical Study of the Power of Story.\u201d\u00a0 Professor Chestek conducted a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.lclark.edu\/law\/programs\/legal_analysis_and_writing\/applied_legal_storytelling_conference\/\">study<\/a> where he wrote four fictional test briefs:\u00a0 two that focused heavily on stating the law and applying it (the \u201cpure logos\u201d briefs), and two that focused on creating a narrative story into which the law was inserted and applied (the \u201cstory\u201d briefs).\u00a0 (He wrote a logos brief and a story brief for both the petitioner and respondent.)\u00a0 Professor Chestek solicited appellate practitioners, appellate judges, appellate judicial law clerks, appellate court staff attorneys, and legal writing professors to read these briefs and rate their strength of persuasion.\u00a0 The participants knew they were taking part in a study, but they did not know who was conducting the study or what the purpose of the study was.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>The results showed that overall, as judges and lawyers advance in their careers and gain more experience, they increasingly value the story in the case as a matter of persuasion.\u00a0 For instance, judicial law clerks (with generally less experience) were more likely to focus on the strength of the law, while judges and practitioners (with more experience) found the briefs featuring a narrative storyline to be more persuasive.\u00a0 Another breakdown of the numbers showed that of those practicing for zero to four years, 45.8% of the participants found the logos brief more persuasive, while 54.2% found the story brief more persuasive.\u00a0 In contrast, of those participants practicing for twenty-five years or more, 14.3% found the logos brief more persuasive, while 78.6% found the story brief more persuasive.\u00a0 7.1% of the twenty-five plus year group found neither more persuasive.<\/p>\n<p>At the conference, Professor Chestek and the attendees considered theories for these results.\u00a0 One idea is that less experienced lawyers are more likely to gravitate to the strength of precedent, while those judges and lawyers may more highly regard the value of the facts of a case.\u00a0 Those judges and lawyers may also value reasoning by analogy more, instead of relying strictly on black letter law.<\/p>\n<p>Professor Chestek is currently writing about his findings in a<a href=\"http:\/\/works.bepress.com\/kenneth_chestek\/2\/\"> law review article.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>At the end of July, both Professor Michael Smith and I attended the Applied Legal Storytelling Conference at Lewis and Clark Law School in Portland, Oregon.\u00a0 The conference was entitled \u201cChapter 2:\u00a0 Once Upon a Legal Story\u201d and focused on storytelling in \u201cways that will directly and tangibly benefit law students (i.e. future lawyers) and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":34,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ocean_post_layout":"","ocean_both_sidebars_style":"","ocean_both_sidebars_content_width":0,"ocean_both_sidebars_sidebars_width":0,"ocean_sidebar":"","ocean_second_sidebar":"","ocean_disable_margins":"enable","ocean_add_body_class":"","ocean_shortcode_before_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_after_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_before_header":"","ocean_shortcode_after_header":"","ocean_has_shortcode":"","ocean_shortcode_after_title":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_bottom":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_bottom":"","ocean_display_top_bar":"default","ocean_display_header":"default","ocean_header_style":"","ocean_center_header_left_menu":"","ocean_custom_header_template":"","ocean_custom_logo":0,"ocean_custom_retina_logo":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_height":0,"ocean_header_custom_menu":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_family":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_subset":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_size":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_unit":"px","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_line_height":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_unit":"","ocean_menu_typo_spacing":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_unit":"","ocean_menu_link_color":"","ocean_menu_link_color_hover":"","ocean_menu_link_color_active":"","ocean_menu_link_background":"","ocean_menu_link_hover_background":"","ocean_menu_link_active_background":"","ocean_menu_social_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_links_color":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_color":"","ocean_disable_title":"default","ocean_disable_heading":"default","ocean_post_title":"","ocean_post_subheading":"","ocean_post_title_style":"","ocean_post_title_background_color":"","ocean_post_title_background":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_image_position":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_attachment":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_repeat":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_size":"","ocean_post_title_height":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay":0.5,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay_color":"","ocean_disable_breadcrumbs":"default","ocean_breadcrumbs_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_separator_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_hover_color":"","ocean_display_footer_widgets":"default","ocean_display_footer_bottom":"default","ocean_custom_footer_template":"","ocean_post_oembed":"","ocean_post_self_hosted_media":"","ocean_post_video_embed":"","ocean_link_format":"","ocean_link_format_target":"self","ocean_quote_format":"","ocean_quote_format_link":"post","ocean_gallery_link_images":"on","ocean_gallery_id":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[35,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6858","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-legal-scholarship","category-legal-writing","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6858","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/34"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6858"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6858\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6858"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6858"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6858"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}