The effective use of authorities requires three primary skills.
First, lawyers must build affirmative arguments with favorable sources: lawyers must find the best possible authorities, describe those authorities clearly, and show the court why those authorities require or favor the outcome that the lawyers’ clients want.
Second, when important authorities can be read to support either side’s position, lawyers must show that the law supports their client. This chapter focuses on these two skills and on a variety of related ways of building arguments based on authorities. (The third critical skill involves protecting a client from the slings and arrows of the other side’s favorable authorities: the art of countering arguments. Chapter 5 will explore this skill.)The term “authorities” is broad. This chapter focuses on statutes, cases, and regulations. Nonbinding authorities such as treatises can also be very influential in some cases, and this chapter points out several instances where lawyers used secondary sources effectively.
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