Effective trial advocacy rests on narrative persuasion rather than legal argument alone

Evidence

“To prevail in court, you have to capture the hearts and minds of the jurors,” was one of the first things Mike said to me. He came from a family of entertainers and his first love was theater. He even went to school for drama, but realized that he was not the best actor, so he went back to law school. The combination—supreme storyteller and brilliant legal mind—was Mike’s superstrength. — Tamara Lanier, From These Roots, 774

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s broader interest in property law as ‘afterlife of slavery’ — how legal storytelling constructs harms that doctrinal categories don’t yet name. — connects to: Trial preparation treats jurors as an audience to be persuaded through staged presentation — G. Alan Tarr, Judicial Process and Judicial…, 850