Lawyer as Artist: Using Significant Moments and Obtuse Objects to Enhance Advocacy

Abstract

Lawyers often act as storytellers, narrators of their clients’ tales of injustice and conflict. These stories tend to be action-based: “He did this, then that happened, then this occurred...” These skeletal narratives may lack the necessary substance and depth to be convincing. Lawyers can attain greater clarity and power in their advocacy by taking on the artist’s mantel and becoming verbal painters of significant moments in their clients’ dramas, complete with the background and accessory objects that best display the righteousness of the client and the failings of the adversary.

In this article the author explains the tools of selection and enhancement that visual artists use in telling stories. Traditionally confined to a moment in time, the visual artist faces the challenge of condensing a complex issue or rich life into a frozen glimpse of what was, what is, and what will be. This limitation, this creative straitjacket, has forced visual artists to carefully develop techniques to achieve meaningful results. Whether through insight or trial and error, artists have developed a number of tenets that have helped them to create powerful paintings, photos, and sculptures that reveal the souls and hearts of their subjects. What artists have learned through intuition, psycholinguists have confirmed through experimental research.

The article first describes and critiques the two leading techniques for legal advocacy - legal analysis and applied narrative, then argues for the special usefulness of verbal images in conveying a memorable depiction of particular events and for enhancing the credibility of witnesses. In the third section, ways of extracting these images from witnesses’ memories and fully developing these verbal pictures are described. In the fourth section are presented two key techniques of the visual artist - “the obtuse object” and “the significant moment” - along with direction on how to apply them to legal advocacy. Next explained are why these techniques are effective, according to art history scholars, aestheticians, psychologists, and psycholinguists, followed by the significance of context in presenting images. In the final section, the author warns of the dangers that lawyers face when they adapt artists’ techniques due to the seductive power of verbal images and the inaccuracy of human memory.

And so, get out your paint brushes and your easel, put on your smock, and learn how lawyers can become artists.

Keywords: Law and literature, law and art, aesthetics, litigation, advocacy, rhetoric