In this chapter, we review various examples of how to tell the court about the facts that led to your client’s dispute.
Lawsuits are bigger than ever. Thanks to our ability to mail, store, and recover files electronically, modern cases often involve millions of documents and dizzying amounts of data.
A case’s record may also include scores of depositions, stacks of declarations, a slew of motions, and scads of letters. Lawyers therefore grind away countless hours trying to summarize what happened in the case. Instead, however, they should frame what happened in the case. This distinction is the central point of this chapter.Effective storytelling involves two or three critical goals for the plaintiff: creating empathy toward your client or generating enmity toward the defendant (or both) as well as satisfying the relevant legal standard. For the defendant, the basic goals of a story are more varied, but usually involve one or more of the following: reducing the vitriol created by the plaintiff’s story; explaining the reasons for the defendant’s actions; showing the gaps, errors, and legal inadequacy of the plaintiff’s story; and counterpunching (by exposing the plaintiff’s own wrongdoing). Each side tries to tell a compelling story, not to prepare a mere summary of what happened.