Weaving the Facts of Your Case into an Innately Familiar “Stock Story” Can Influence the Reader of Your Brief.
Mike Skotnicki
Posted on May 21, 2012
As was noted in my last post, judges and appellate experts agree that every brief should tell a story. And the story should be one of conflict. Conflict among the characters make the best stories and lawsuits are rife with conflict. Thus, the facts of a lawsuit often make for a great story. But stories don’t write themselves and so an appellate attorney must transform a set of facts into a great story. As one legal writer has noted, facts are forgotten, but stories are remembered. But what kind of story? Some stories are better than others. Some stories are more familiar and ring more true in our mind. Some types of stories have been passed from generation to generation and become ingrained in our…