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Studies by law professors and articles by the likes of Richard Posner illustrate how persuasive stories are in affecting judicial decision-making and how underappreciated the storytelling art is among lawyers.

Giving judges a reason, on a human level, to decide cases in your favor requires briefing grounded in law and logic coupled with a story that evokes an emotional response, often on an unconscious level. Our typical story highlights people who encounter business misconduct, fight against the stronger adversary while bucking long odds (the conflict that drives the story), and who should ultimately prevail if justice and fairness are honored (the climax and denouement).

Skillful storytelling takes a brief from the law school writing course instruction of producing a “just the facts” soullessly objective piece of technical writing to the evocative ground of Atticus Finch moving the entire courtroom. Or at least it should. This webinar is geared to attorneys of all experience levels.


What You Will Learn
• How to marry the elements of plot and theme to create a coherent and persuasive legal argument
• How to use deep frames to subtly convey ideas in text and subtext
• How to distill and recapitulate to reinforce the message of plot and theme


Speaker
John Roddy represents consumers in class actions challenging unfair and deceptive business practices and serves as relator’s counsel in qui tam “whistleblower” actions. In the last two decades, the settlements in cases he has litigated have returned more than $1 billion to consumers harmed by marketplace misconduct. John regularly writes and speaks on class action practice and consumer financial services law, and he has published dozens of articles on these topics. He has co-chaired Practicing Law Institute (PLI)’s Annual Consumer Financial Services Institute for the past twenty-five years. John is also a Fellow of the American College of Consumer Financial Services Lawyers, an organization limited to those lawyers who have achieved preeminence in the field of consumer financial services law and who have made repeated and substantial contributions to the promotion of learning and scholarship in consumer financial services law through teaching, lecturing, and published writings.