Storytelling for Lawyers Read Free Page A

“myocardial infarct.”
    There is a second legal issue analyzed in the opinion: whether plaintiff’s detention was permissible under a statute that permits the store owner to detain a customer who is suspected of shoplifting for a reasonable time, and in a reasonable manner, provided there are reasonable grounds for the detention. The court, however, chooses strategically not to tell this part of the story; it concludes that it does not have to do so because, based on its initial telling of the story, there were “no reasonable grounds for believing that the plaintiff was committing larceny and, therefore, he should not have been detained at all.” 3 It adds that the “physical restraint in a public place imposed upon the plaintiff, an elderly man, who had exhibited no aggressive intention to depart, could be said to constitute an unreasonable method by which to effect a detention.” 4 Then the court analyzes the law of reasonable suspicion at some length and finally, in my opinion, does the right thing by providing a just and correct legal outcome, affirming the verdict of the trial court for the plaintiff.
    My point is twofold: first, my first-semester students, not yet jaded by law school, are correct when they say that they can predict the outcome from reading the initial summary of the facts. Like Brooks’s prescient graduate student, the students intuitively realize that the opening or beginning of the opinion determines the trajectory of the plot for both the factual and legal stories that follow. It also anticipates the ending and outcome of the case. Second, even where the legal storyteller is an appellate judge who is purportedly retelling a story “objectively,” merely presenting the facts in a simple linear chronology, she inevitably constructs the trajectory of a purposefulplot to reach a predetermined outcome. In doing so, the judge affirms the value of justice, inscribing legal meaning upon the case and providing closure to the story.
    Plotting is important in all legal storytelling. It is crucial in legal advocacy that can best be understood as the battle of competing stories in the courtroom. But what concepts or applied narrative theory might be useful as tools for reflective lawyer-storytellers engaged in this battle?
A. Basic Terms and Concepts
I. What Is Plot?
    Law stories, like all stories, are the creations of an unseen intelligence that selects, shapes, and transforms raw material into
events
and then arranges these events into the ordered
sequence
of a story. This sequence of events, or plot, provides meaning to the human affairs depicted in the story.
    These events do not come ready-made like prenumbered pieces or the links to be inserted into a preconfigured chain. The nature of the plot itself determines what kind of actions can serve as events in the story and enter the plot itself. Events that fit one plot will not fit another and must be excluded. This relationship creates a curious dynamic—the plot controls events but, in turn, is shaped by the events it controls. The meaning of the whole is always a product of the parts yet, simultaneously, the parts derive their meaning from the whole. The plot and event create one another; there is a symbiotic interdependency between the two. This relationship may seem circular or even obscure, and more will be said about it throughout this book. For now, I observe that:
    â€¢ Only some kind of events fit into any particular type of plot; and
    â€¢ When the story begins, the reader must be clued into what type of story it is going to be.
2. Narrative Profluence and Causation
    â€œThe king died and then the queen died” is merely a chronological listing of two unrelated occurrences. But add a mere two words: “the king died and then the queen died
of grief.”
These two events are not yet a plot, but the events are pushed together and connected. The reader or listener is drawn into what