10th Applied Legal Storytelling Conference

Advanced Appellate Advocacy can be taught to a relatively large class in an engaging way through carefully crafted group projects. This presentation will showcase Professor Jennifer Romig's group project assignments in Appellate Storytelling and Legal Methods. Students select their own case files and critically read the briefs and opinion in their chosen case. They present key moments in the briefs, showing the advocates' use of themes, characterization, support in the record or lack of evidence, the procedural posture of the case relative to the stories that can be told, and many other facets of appellate advocacy. These group projects present a meaningful opportunity for students to collaborate on critically taking apart a set of briefs and then assembling and presenting their own educational presentation on what they saw and learned. Students can thus start to appreciate when advocates do the best with what they have, lose despite having a strong argument, fail to respond to an important point or lose credibility, and generally demonstrate the advocates' own professional identity through their appellate work. 

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Clemency is unique in that is largely unbound by rules and rooted in narrative. Prof. Osler and a former client explore the crucial role of story in this ancient and often controversial process.

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This presentation describes a unique exercise from the course “Happiness, Well-Being, and Lawyering,” where students were tricked into solving a real legal problem under the guise of a simulation. The “Ender’s Game” exercise helps students confront impostor syndrome, practice teamwork, and learn the importance of seeking help in professional settings.

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The panelists will describe being expert witnesses retained pursuant to California’s Racial Justice Act (the RJA). In testifying as expert witnesses under the RJA, the panelists will explain how their Applied Legal Storytelling expertise have made a real difference in the lives of criminal defendants. 

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In this presentation, we will analyze the relationship between evidentiary foundations and the role of contextual facts in legal storytelling, rejecting the minimalist approach to laying foundations touted in most trial advocacy texts and instead encouraging the use of persuasive narrative techniques for laying the context for evidence.

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An artist and a law professor walked into a classroom . . . . Learn how to use untraditional media(like comics) to convey extremely serious ideas. Creating space for creativity opens us up to new ideas, helps build coalitions, and fosters innovation in legal advocacy.

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Every Taylor Swift fan is familiar with the Anti-Hero, but did you know that Joseph Campbell created a bevy of character archetypes  that serve pivotal roles in storytelling across genres? This presentation, by two screenwriters, aims to show attendees how they can harness the power of character archetypes in legal writing.

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Colleges and universities can continue to diversify their campuses by prioritizing the admission and hiring of descendants of those the institution has enslaved, colonized, or otherwise wronged without running afoul of the Equal Protection Clause or Title VI. But, to do so, they must shed the dominant story and create the space for the counterstory.

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HIV-criminalization laws were enacted amidst widespread AIDS hysteria in the 1980s.  The public attributed the disease to homosexual activity and perceived “deviant” sexual behavior.  Forty years later, the hysteria has ebbed and science has evolved, yet these laws remain. 

When do regulatory policies stop protecting communities and start legislating morality?

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This presentation summarizes a study of the amicus briefs filed in milestone abortion cases. Its findings reveal the roles of amicus briefs as storytelling tools, as each side deployed evolving depictions of contrasting villains, heroes, settings, and story arcs to persuade the Court. 

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Transactional literary theory, with its focus on the reader, illuminates for students what they bring to their reading of the law – the stories they create for themselves as they read legal authority in the context of resolving a legal dispute.  This illumination will enable them to develop sophisticated, thoughtful written legal analysis.   

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This presentation will compare and contrast writing techniques employed in both brief and creative nonfiction writing, using a clinic case where I am lead counsel and a creative nonfiction essay that I authored. The talk will also compare the feedback I received from law and creative writing faculty.

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Immigration attorneys who specialize in humanitarian-based relief draft personal statements in their client’s voice. Here, the attorney serves as a storyteller, using narrative elements to craft a compelling account of their client’s experiences. Simultaneously, in gathering evidence and capturing an oral record in writing, the attorney acts as a historian. 

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When Kyler Murray received a massive contract extension, a single clause controlled the narrative. The Murray “homework” clause is an exemplar for discussing how contracts are not always greater than the sum of their parts. This case study emphasizes the existence of stories—even within the context of a contract. 

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This roundtable begins the storytelling of individuals who attempted to make the NTT to TT leap. We faced structural, hierarchical challenges—some new and surprising. Our stories speak to the larger picture of barriers in the legal academy. We appreciate that others have stories and invite audience involvement. 

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Law stories, found in both opinions and rules, are often pale imitations of the complex realities from which they sprung. This presentation will provide concrete methods for problematizing law stories by surrounding them with context and critique, thus enabling students to move past old narratives and imagine new ones. 

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Case rounds, a common pedagogy of clinical legal education, offer a unique opportunity to explore narrative frameworks and shift methods depending on the goals of the session. All participants work together to resolve problems and connect to find shared meaning. This presentation, through interactive exercises, will explore the ways in which facilitators can use rounds to explore framing in storytelling.

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Visual aids are powerful storytelling tools. But what makes an effective visual aid? Drawing on cognitive and psychological research and decades of in-court experience, this program will use real-life examples to show the do’s and don’ts for using visual aids to strengthen in-court storytelling.

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Since political victors get to write the laws that the rest of us must obey, we need to understand how negativity influences elections. This session will examine how false stories can change the outcome of an election, and the implications for lawmaking in the aftermath of the election.

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This presentation analyzes the technique of framing, which prioritizes and also necessarily obscures information. In particular, the presentation illustrates how the SCOTUS used framing to reject stare decisis in Dobbs, SFFA, and Loper Bright by shifting focus to abstract principles, minimizing reliance interests, and reframing key issues.

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How do the stories our students hear about these legal professional’s lack of civility impact the student’s view of civility and as teachers tasked with the responsibility of teaching them about the law and professionalism, and how do we redirect those stories?

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This presentation will support the proposition that recent dissenting opinions by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson serve a witnessing function, telling the stories of the individual and societal injuries wrought by the majority opinions to which they respond.

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This presentation examines the challenges of articulating physical pain in legal contexts, exploring how the law’s reliance on objective narratives and structural biases often fails to capture pain’s subjective reality. Using literary and rhetorical theory, the presentation considers ways to create more empathetic, humane approaches to understanding and communicating human suffering in legal contexts.

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This presentation is a rhetorical analysis of the narrative of one of the most iconic rape cases in the United States, Commonwealth v. Berkowitz. The goal is to explore whether rape reform efforts should be reframed to focus primarily on legal rhetoric and narrative rather than on legal doctrine.

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ACA, WARN, and the USA PATRIOT Act—some of the most significant pieces of legislation are best known by their short titles. So what makes these names so powerful and memorable? This TED-style talk will explore the persuasive impact of legislative short titles on Congress, communities, and the courts.

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Universal citation was supposed to be a cure-all for the ills of hidebound (and book-bound) legal information landscape. But after the late 1990s, the movement has largely stood still. We tell the story of North Carolina’s two-year leap into—and out of—universal citation, and what was behind it. 

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This presentation will identify how narratives can best educate and resonate with audiences concerned with cruise ship impacts in five Arctic ports:  Juneau and Nome in Alaska, United States; Akureyri, Iceland; Visby, Sweden; and Bergen, Norway.  Participants in the session will take away an appreciation for the strategic choices necessary to facilitate education of and even action from relevant audiences.   

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This presentation will focus on how the incorporation of narrative techniques into contract drafting can be used as an avenue for developing and communicating company culture and, in turn, as a vehicle for social change. Concrete illustrations will be shared as to how companies can embed company culture into their employment contracts by using these narrative techniques: character and voice; stock stories and counter-stories; plot and alternative plot lines; and expressive language.

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Emerita Professor Mary Trevor and podcaster Cynthia Bemis Abrams present their upcoming interdisciplinary law review article describing twentieth-century prime-time television episodes, now readily available, that promoted awareness of sexual harassment through rhetorical storytelling. With contextual enrichment, these episodes prompt informative comparisons to legal storytelling. 

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What role does gender play in capital prosecutors' and defense lawyers' narratives? This presentation examines capital narratives--penalty-phase closing arguments in particular--through the lenses of masculinities theory and feminist legal theory.

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Law school curriculum tells a story. This presentation will consider the story law schools tell through the focus on the federal constitution at the expense of state constitutions, and then invite broader conversation about what additional curricular decisions tell first-year students about what it means to be a lawyer.

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Jurors rarely hear about discovery.  Discovery, the main life of lawsuits, is where some lawyers perpetrate shady conduct to shape "the record" -- and know they can get away with it. But why let them?  Isn’t hiding evidence of consciousness of guilt / liability?  Reshaping the Narrative of Winning by Suing for Gender Pay Equity in Law Schools, Nantiya Ruan, Professor of Law, UNLV Boyd School of Law Gender pay equity suits against law schools have recently settled. As a lawyer and professor involved in these suits, the presenter aims to reshape the narrative on litigation successes fighting for pay equity in court. 

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Charlotte was a loyal friend, a great writer, and a successful lawyer. She saved Wilbur’s life with brevity, persuasion, and an unwavering devotion to client-centered lawyering. Charlotte’s  focus on Wilbur’s needs and goals underpinned her success in persuading through one and two word stories. 

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Sensationalist rhetoric has been a hallmark of the new administration, and it is employed to target the rights of LGBTQ people and women. Can we flag the key words being used to manipulate public perception as a tool to educate and empower young lawyers?

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This presentation explores the narrative of deportees from the U.S. convicted of an aggravated felony, sometimes referred to as the immigration law death penalty. It unearths the difference between the “story” the law tells about offenders and the stories deportees would tell about their own lives if they could.

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My paper explores whether litigants alleging racism could introduce published accounts of racism – e.g. those written by W.E.B. Dubois, Audre Lorde, and Franz Fanon – as evidence in their Canadian Human Rights law cases to support their claim.

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New attorneys must write clear, precise memos that build credibility through strong, error-free communication. Drawing from Hemingway’s Iceberg Theory, this presentation explores how writers can use storytelling techniques to enhance legal writing, focusing on detail, reader trust, key repetition, and realism references to strengthen ethos and convey meaning concisely.

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The widely accepted Dynamics of Abuse, originating in the domestic-violence field, can be argued to be a Core Narrative Structure applicable universally. Unveiling it as a structure that already exists in literature and storytelling can help us to more readily recognize core human experiences of abuse and control.

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This presentation will discuss the “common person/everyman” archetypal character and the value it can add to professional identity formation in lawyers. It will explain the common traits of this stock character and explore how casting lawyers into the role of the everyman can speak to common professional identity formation hurdles. Finally, it will illustrate the normalizing value of telling stories about ordinary attorneys and their favorite moment practicing law with a pedagogical demonstration.    

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“Narrative fidelity” is an important concept for understanding and teaching legal storytelling. But it’s also problematic. Can we stay true to its purposes, or is it time to let it go? 

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If the product of effective storytelling in legal advocacy is to obfuscate the truth and distract the decisionmaker, might an ideal system of justice be one that is above the influence of storytelling? Or is storytelling-as-advocacy a positive feature of our adversarial system? Let’s think through these ideas together.

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With courts increasingly using AI to review legal briefs, what challenges arise for legal writers? This presentation explores emerging questions about crafting narratives that effectively communicate with both human and AI readers, examining the potential impacts on legal storytelling and advocacy.

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Graphic novels are an art form that can inspire and inform the study of narrative in legal writing. In our presentation, we will share how graphic novel fiction writing techniques can be applied in teaching students about predictive analysis and writing, persuasion, and professional identity. 

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“Voices briefs” are a mechanism through which non-party stakeholders can use personal narrative to bring legal issues to life. Voices briefs have been used primarily in abortion rights and marriage equality cases.This presentation offers an initial examination into the potential that voices briefs might have in another context: education.

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I will tell three stories to illustrate counter-narrative.
First, I examine my latest work about United States v. Thind (1923). Second, I will tell the story of how this article became the basis for the first-ever conference on Sikhs and Storytelling. Finally, I will tell the story of how this piece uncovered hidden histories that deserve their own spotlight.

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Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver Travels (1726) contains one of the most memorable and biting portrayals of lawyers in classic literature. We will read portions of this passage and discuss its accuracy, its literary techniques, and its application to the practice of law and perspectives on a system of justice.

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When and why might a legal writer tell a story of what didn’t happen rather than what did happen?  This presentation will use examples from judicial opinions to examine the purposes served by negation – i.e., the use of words such as “not” – in legal narratives. 

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