9th Applied Legal Storytelling Conference

Please hang posters at this time.

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Seduced by Story? Have We Created a Monster? 

Ruth Anne Robbins & Steve Johansen

Bearing Witness--Lawyers as Truthtellers When the Public Story is a Lie

Charlie Martel

Incorporating Principles of Constituent Storytelling in Legal Advocacy

Kim Holst

Storytelling Ethics, Round 2: An Applied Legal Storytelling Statement on Professionalism

Helena Whalen-Bridge, Derek Kiernan-Johnson, Rachel Croskery-Roberts, & Steve Johansen 

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This program will explore advocacy and the formation of professional identity through the stories of law students, lawyers, and law schools. The formation of professional identity is a story that we construct for and tell ourselves and that we share with the profession and the outside world. And, inevitably, this story will shape how we see ourselves and present ourselves professionally—it’s something of a role that we play, that perhaps begins to change who we really are (whatever that means). 

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The Storytelling Project: Fostering Empathy and Building Skillsets across Law School Community

Alexandra D'Italia 

Storytelling, Civility, Civil Discourse and the 21st Century Attorney 

Angela Downes & Kay Elliott

The Trouble Around Expanding to China

Carolina Fabara

Teaching Persuasion through Storytelling in Popular Culture and Legal Advocacy

Amanda Harmon Cooley

Music Education Methods for Developing Law Student Foundations in Narrative Storytelling

Joshua Aaron Jones

“How-to-Succeed-in-Law-School” Books: Self-Help Literature and the American Dream of a Legal Education

Lenora Ledwon

Keeping the Capital Client’s Story Alive Through Dynamic Storytelling

Sylvia Lett

Using the Great Gatsby to Teach Narrative Theory

Amy R. Stein 

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Poster presenters will be stationed near their posters to talk about their work. Come, grab a refreshment, and celebrate these visual scholars!

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Coffee and Continental Breakfast

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Law professors in both the clinical and legal writing spheres have each experienced challenges with building the discipline of legal practice and legal communication. The challenges come both internally and externally. What steps have the groups of professors taken to gain scholarly legitimacy? What has worked? What can we learn from these experiences? What can other professors in other fields offer in terms of advice or support?

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This presentation will study the triad of 2016 social media campaigns known as “#AskDr.Kasich,” “#askbevinaboutmyvag,” and “#PeriodsforPence.” While these legislative campaigns, each located in the regional mid-South, were motivated by restrictive state abortion bills, they uniquely positioned menstruation and women’s reproductive health as the center of their activism – not abortion. They tapped into meaningful disruptions in the geographies, religiosities, and masculinities of abortion politics. In so doing, they transformed the rhetorical battle of dignity and disgust in discussing and regulating women’s reproductive decision-making into a political catalyst for solidarity and activism. This case study reveals how narratives of menstruation and women’s health were used as political tools of disruption and solidarity in ways that inform the vital work of regional law reform efforts in a post-Dobbs America.

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My paper will use three recent controversies within the state of Tennessee to illustrate how visual rhetoric, which carries so much persuasive power, has become a flashpoint in contemporary culture wars about race, history, and memory. Grand jury deliberations inside jury rooms festooned with Confederate memorabilia; laws regulating the removal of Confederate statues from public land; and legislation limiting discussion of so-called ?divisive concepts? all relate to visual rhetoric: what we see, what we must see, and what we don?t see. I will discuss these trends which, at the same time, restrict visual narrative but also mandate visual narrative, legally forcing citizens to see only one story.

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Parliamentary human rights scrutiny processes require any proposed law to be subject to scrutiny by a parliamentary committee to determine its impact on human rights. Our research examines these processes in the context of drugs legislation. This presentation examines the use of storytelling by parliamentary actors when figuring people who use drugs, based on interviews with those involved in these processes.

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Effective storytelling begets effective rhetoric, but both rely on an understanding and appreciation for audience. Most student-lawyers have little or no experience with their imagined audience. This presentation will offer some of the findings from reviewing literature from other disciples, e.g., journalism, literature, as well as applied storytelling about how to effectively teach audience through experiential pedagogy. I will offer two exercises I use in my class to familiarize my students with their audience.

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This presentation urges attendees to interrogate the conventional narratives of justice, safety, law and order and to consider whether the institutions that pretend to safeguard those values are actually achieving those ends. It will also challenge attendees to use their creative powers to imagine what a world without police and prisons might look like.

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Many statutes would be more effective if drafted as stock stories, rather than conventional logical formulae, because legislation regulates what people do in recurring sequences of events. The presentation will compare the U.S. Electoral Count Act with a stock story redraft and will explain a current U.K. statutory drafting style that resembles storytelling and a similar Swedish drafting tradition.

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Legal systems use procedural rules to determine how to conduct proceedings, which in turn impact what narratives are allowed and what shape they take. This session will first engage in an interactive exercise with participants in which breakout groups use different procedures to create a legal narrative from the same evidence, and then compare the results. The session will then share the results of research into application of this idea in criminal matters.

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This presentation will discuss how the literary techniques of ?defamiliarization? can be used in brief writing as a means of shaking loose conscious or, in some cases unconscious, biases in the law, or as a means of addressing adverse precedent. The presentation will use examples from the arts to illustrate different defamiliarization techniques, and will then examine how these techniques can be used to overcome unfavorable precedent and/or judicial or societal biases by looking at examples from several high-profile cases, such as Bowers v. Hardwick, Romer v. Evans, and Atwater v. City of Lago Vista. The presentation argues that, given the heavy reliance of our legal system on immediate precedent as a basis for decision-making, it is worth considering techniques that artists have used to ?shake up? similarly deep-rooted perspectives.

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When processing the 'story' of a case, appellate judges, like all competent readers, produce mental imagery of the characters; that is, appellate judges visualize, in their mind?s eye, the parties and witnesses that populate the story. But in appellate practice, judges? 'character visualizations' are often unguided, and therefore, unreliable. Does it matter? And if it does, what might lawyers do about it?

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Most storytelling scholarship focuses on dispute resolution. Little has been written, however, about how stories influence the creation of law. This session will draw upon my recent experience as a member of the Wyoming House of Representatives to examine how stories affect lawmakers as they draft statutes or seek to persuade each other to vote for particular bills.

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Placing storytelling at the center of discussions about lawyering is not a morally inconsequential act. To the contrary, doing so can raise serious problems of professional ethics and questions about how lawyers should conceive of their role in the justice system.

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Influencing narratives is a key component of policy advocacy. Many public interest lawyers and advocates who work in policy spaces often find themselves coming up against challenging narratives that lawmakers, and even the general public, hold. This session will explore various storytelling techniques that can be used to combat narratives in a number of policy and legal fields.

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This presentation will engage the audience by introducing origin storytelling activities that can be used to cultivate a law student?s cultural self-awareness in classrooms, clinics, and externship field sites. Participants will gain appreciation for strategies that support students in the ongoing learning process of self-exploration and self-critique involved in the demonstration of cultural humility.

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Indigenous / First Nation legal storytelling as the basis for law and the applicable legal principles are included in this narrative telling of a shooting of a Napesis (Cree boy) on his peoples' territory. Unreported in Canadian legal case reporters, Neheyiwak / Cree / Indigenous laws are engaged and unpacked in this story.

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Contemporary citation practices tell stories about our methods and values. Unfortunately, these stories often conflict with justice. Building on critical legal research and citation justice scholarship, this presentation explores a series of overlooked and underused citation methods that prioritize safety of marginalized people and promote accessibility for disabled, low-income, and all other readers, all of which are easily implementable. Attendees will gain a new perspective on citation and leave equipped with powerful, practical tools to pursue just citation practices in their scholarship, classroom or both.

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This paper extends Bennett and Feldman?s work on ?reconstruction of realities in courtrooms? to a qualitative empirical case study of Indian legal practice. I investigate the structural role that the translation of reality into stories, and the translation of those stories into legal language, play in making law a force of power, rather than a force of good. The paper is based on ~25 qualitative interviews of lawyers and judges, and the way they understand, control, and shape legal narratives.

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Lawyers regularly joke about their supposed inability to address mathematical and scientific issues. However, these issues can be critical to a dispute, and lawyers must effectively communicate about them. This presentation will explain research supporting use of storytelling techniques to communicate mathematical and scientific concepts and provide examples of how to best to effectuate that communication.

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This presentation will examine how to use AI for storytelling. It will also explore what AI understands about human emotions and the implications of that when using AI?especially when telling stories.

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True Crime Docuseries are the personification of legal storytelling, narrating crimes using masterful techniques in a binge-worthy manner. The presentation uses anecdotes from the 49 true crime docuseries examined to explore the narrative deployed. These docuseries lay out the facts so viewers can comprehend these heinous actions, honour the victims, and provide avenues for seeking help.

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Based on the panelists experience in immigration law and child advocacy, the session will highlight the benefits of incorporating the storytelling of clients into scholarly writing, representation and clinical pedagogy. Panelists will describe specific examples of centering client storytelling and the processes for developing that work in a variety of mediums including legal scholarship, podcasts, advocacy pieces, and clinical teaching utilizing incorporating trauma informed practice.

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Artificial intelligence will change the legal world, and I will explore how a legal storyteller should prepare to tell the narratives of AI, cyberspace, and the Metaverse. I will discuss the competing views of current issues regarding the ownership, copyrightability, and fair use of generative AI, and examine competing narratives in the cyber world and growing metaverse regarding AI-assisted innovation vs. enslavement by surveillance and algorithmic control, and whether AI will empower or overwhelm human self-actualization.

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This presentation explores corporate lawyering as an act of narrative archaeology. In it, we demonstrate that the ability to extract narrative from technical documents like financial statements and corporate charters is a core skill for corporate lawyers. We will demonstrate this through close readings of financial statements and corporate charters of a single, publicly traded corporation.

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It can be difficult to motivate students to spend time and effort to develop the critical skill of reflection. We propose that reframing reflection as a storytelling process can improve accessibility and motivation. By encouraging students to notice the events they experience and describe them carefully and vibrantly, students simultaneously learn the skills of reflection, fact development, and case theory.

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It's in the midst of the stories that we tell in which our hearts change. And I argue that heart change leads to positive legal change. In this presentation, I share an encounter with the classic Socrates, who returns to our jurisdictions in conversations with policy makers, justices, law faculty, and bar examiners to explore whether the bar exam might be constitutionally suspect as a sort of constitutional tort because our hearts know, deep down, that bar exams don't live up to the hype and promises of which we proclaim and yet perpetuate race-based exclusions. So, let's hear the stories that we tell to find out what lurks in our hearts, deep down, about the bar exam.

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Using stories about CSA in Jamaica from the media and cases as an anchor, this presentation suggests that Law School in Jamaica and law schools worldwide should provide intentional instruction on bias, cross-cultural competency, and cultural competency because failing to do can cause hearing, listening, and empathy to suffer and undermine the expectation of educating effective, ethical, and responsible lawyers.

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This presentation is about a class period in a transactional law clinic in which I teach the skills of contract interpretation. It will tell the story of the transformation of this class period from a very boring PowerPoint-based snoozefest into a more interesting experience: a simplified version of the hero's journey, with the students playing the role of the heroes-to-be.

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International courts ?speak? to their audiences through various communications. These communications inform us about the rules of international law, of course, but they do many more things. In my presentation, I focus on how these communications contribute to constructing the identity of international courts by weaving stories and projecting self-images. I take the International Court of Justice as a case in point, and I argue it is high time we grappled with international adjudication's (auto-)narrative dimension.

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Even progressive legislators are reluctant to deny legal fatherhood to men who raped or otherwise coerced the intercourse that led to the pregnancy. The question for this presentation is why: what stories do these legislators tell themselves about these paternity claims that persuade them to ignore the rights of women to autonomy and freedom from continuing harm.

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Despite regulatory flexibility, French wine labels for the U.S. market omit what one might suppose is the most important information for consumers: what grapes are in the bottle. Often the producer?s name appears only in small print in the background. Why? Tools of visual storytelling and constitutive rhetoric help explain this paradox, with lessons for the broader AppLS community.

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This presentation provides a brief overview of the influence of dominant cultural narratives on legal decision-making in cases driven by policy arguments. It also offers strategies and exercises writers can use when advocating for the adoption of a cultural counter-narrative, one that challenges the dominant stories, with the intent of increasing its persuasive influence.

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Coffee and Continential Breakfast

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Storytelling and first-person narrative have fallen by the wayside in the last couple of decades in "traditional" legal scholarship, including that about sexual assault. Prof. Romero will speak to the benefits and challenges of incorporating autoethnography in legal academic writing, including when handling sensitive topics.

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This presentation takes an applied legal storytelling lens to the asylum context. It seeks to examine the narrative of asylum generally and to question how stock structures associated with women, gender-based violence, and cultures of violence influence the plight of women who seek asylum in the United States.

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This presentation provides a case study of the role of narrative (fiction and non-fiction) in a shared understanding of the ethics and efficacy of police procedures. It examines the role of drama in focusing attention and changing attitudes toward interrogation practices, especially with respect to juveniles and attempts to explain why we put so much stock in evidence that the empirical data suggest is faulty.

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Women in the Arab world have never had better access to education and professional careers. Despite this, gender stereotypes are hampering women?s progression towards gender equality. In my presentation I would discuss how the representation of female lawyers in Arabic films is contributing to the issue specifically considering the representation of female lawyers in Lebanese and Egyptian cinema over the last 75 years.

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This presentation examines how legal narratives can be shaped by different types of negative information. The negative spaces, the untold stories, contain information that is hidden by its very absence. In contrast, negation ? i.e., the use of words such as ?not? ? emphasizes negative information by highlighting the absence or lack of something.

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Attendees will learn about the most recent trends concerning identity and language. Subsequently, attendees will have the opportunity to consider what ?rules of the road? we might use when telling a story so as not to other the audience. By session?s end, we will have created a list to be shared with attendees for future discussion and development.

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Capital defense attorney Mridula Raman will discuss the innovative ways in which lawyers share their clients? stories when seeking capital clemency. She will speak about questions that arise in clemency storytelling, as well as the lessons we can learn from clemency that might apply to the legal storytelling many of us do in more traditional fora.

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Writers are told to ?write what you know.? In law, what is considered 'known' tends to reflect perspectives and experiences of dominant groups, framed in classical philosophy, logic, and high-level vocabulary that mark an elite education and status. Further, what is 'known' is impersonal; what is personal is considered irrelevant. In this presentation, we will argue for the importance and diversity of personal narrative as a way to interrupt tropes generated by dominant groups. We will also discuss ideas for how to incorporate personal narratives into the field of law.

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Prof. Gilchrist will examine the stories and journeys of individuals, mostly young Muslim men, who were wronged in the aftermath of 9/11. The talk will detail the importance of telling their stories and how they can be used to vindicate rights and prevent future harms. The talk will also explore teaching national security law through their stories.

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This presentation focuses on how racial anxiety and commitment to color-blindness may be impacting the words U.S. Supreme Court Justices use during oral arguments in discrimination cases. It will analyze how the absence of race in Supreme Court discourse can impact court decisions, as there were surprisingly few references to identified racial terms, even when the case turned on race.

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How does one teach and challenge corporate law?s claim that shareholder wealth maximization is the sole and proper purpose of a corporation? Through narrative. The subject of corporate law can be dry. This presentation will discuss how the professor brings stakeholder capitalism to life through the compelling story of a family feud over Market Basket, a beloved U.S. grocery chain.

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A ?high crime area? designation and a suspect?s flight are sufficient to justify a suspect?s stop by police. This presentation will consider (1) how the high crime setting functions in judicial writing, transporting the reader into a predictable storyworld that taps into racial stereotypes, and (2) the implications of its use in combination with loaded descriptions of a suspect?s actions.

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Nonlawyers typically think and communicate differently than lawyers. Nonlawyers? stories are personal, and often persuasive, but are often disconnected from the applicable law. Using examples from cases litigated by pro se parties, I plan to examine the challenges of turning ?non-legal? stories into ?legal? stories.

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In bankruptcy, the debtor is often featured as either the victim or the villain in the story of the debtor?s financial woes. When a debtor is accused of being unworthy of relief, interested parties present conflicting narratives. Ultimately, the bankruptcy judge weaves the narrative that determines the debtor?s fate. We examine these narratives and the factors that influence them.

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The best way to understand how the United States presently justifies its authority over Native peoples and nations is as a misbegotten trickster story. Through the lens of Native storytelling, it becomes possible to expose the fragility of current legal reasoning and to imagine alternatives. This presentation will explore how we take this next step in decolonizing the law.

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Public interest lawyers and clinical and legal writing professors discuss the narrative impact and advocacy advantages of four hashtags relevant to legal advocacy campaigns, while addressing potential pitfalls and hidden or ignored dimensions. Advocates in immigrant rights, community economic development, criminal justice reform, and workers? rights share insights into popular taglines and critique the simplification made necessary by hashtag culture.

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What's the story with the ancient Western rhetorical tradition? Is the so-called ?classical? era of Greece and Rome relevant to today?s legal education and practice? To what extent does contemporary law reflect its influence? Should it be rejected on the basis that it originated in societies that were undemocratic, slaveholding, and sexist? Authors share their perspectives and invite yours.

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Where does knowledge come from, how is it produced, and how can we use it to serve just ends? This session explores storytelling from the perspective of liberatory theories that challenge dominant narratives of the carceral system. This includes seeking out diverse knowledge sources, taking those sources seriously, and upending a vicious cycle of epistemic oppression within the law.

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Storytelling for clients is really important as they want to feel believed, but recollections are subjective. We know there are two sides to every story and ignoring discrepancies can lead to inaccurate advice. How do we teach students to do this sensitively? How do they explain to clients that often courts do not decide what is the ?truth? unless the case requires it?

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In the wake of Dobbs, what recourse will pregnant people have when their digital lives are searched for purposes of criminal prosecution? What stories will pregnant people need to tell to protect their digital lives and what stories do we tell ourselves about our reasonable expectation of privacy in the modern digital age?

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In this presentation, we will unpack the process courts use in assessing the reasonableness of inferences parties attempt to draw in cases. Our hypothesis is that judicial rulings on the reasonableness of inferences are based not so much on deductive rule-based logic as they are on persuasive storytelling for a particular audience. Our findings will assist lawyers in arguing circumstantial evidence to judges and juries.

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Adolescents have a tremendous capacity for change and their culpability in criminal matters differs from that of adults. My students and I use storytelling to help decision-makers recognize that our clients are more than the worst thing they ever did. Our ability to change the narrative about our clients has helped more than 25 individuals gain early release from lengthy prison sentences they received as children. I will share our powerful techniques to promote evidence- based responses to crime that recognize the complex effects of traumatic environments, structural racism, poverty, and lack of brain development on delinquent and criminal behavior.

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Using dramatic examples, this presentation will explain when, why, and how a legal advocate should, as a rhetorical strategy, present the story (i.e., history) of a legal rule in a persuasive document. In many situations, the explanation of a rule?s ?life? will enhance a writer?s argument by providing context, clarity, and emphasis regarding the rule?s meaning and purpose.

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Stories are an integral part of the criminal legal system. People, including juries, love stories, and those who tell compelling stories, often have the power to change and control the narrative. This interactive session will feature a demonstration and role-play as we develop areas for persuasive storytelling that moves the fact finder. This presentation will emphasize the intersection of facts, law, and emotion (human element) to move the fact finder to effect social change in the criminal law context.

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The United States claims sovereignty over Hawaii by reason of 'Annexation.' This is the story, or more truthfully, a complete fabrication. This presentation will show how power and misrepresentation can combine to conquer a sovereign nation, the Kingdom of Hawaii.

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This presentation will explore how game-based learning can (1) meaningfully promote student interaction with and integration of materials using storytelling techniques and narrative structure, (2) remotely, yet meaningfully, connect students with one another, and (3) address, combat, and overcome test anxiety and other stress-based barrier to learning and academic success. We know the power of narrative in legal advocacy, but storytelling techniques in creative pedagogy?including game-based learning?could be truly transformational in legal education.

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Reality checking parties' ?stories? is a useful mediation tool. But reality checking can be perceived as adversarial. This presentation will explore how mediators can engage parties (during separate caucus sessions) in storytelling exercises that guide parties to reality test their story and evaluate how that story might differ from what a judge or jury might take from the facts.

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This paper presentation examines the role of the so-called 'sovereign citizen' (the obstreperous and usually vexatious, and occasionally, violent litigant) in the American courts, and how such can help to de-stabilize rigid modes of courtroom discourse that minimize or eliminate the power of people's stories.

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This presentation will elevate the quiet, behind-the-scenes lawyer, using stories from infamous American criminal trials. The notorious lawyers are well-known, but other lawyers also changed the trial?s outcome and American law. These lawyers performed their roles in ordinary ways with extraordinary results. Their impact has been understated, so this presentation will tell ?the rest of the story.?

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I will explore the contradictory premises of the family court system, which both limits a litigant?s narrative and yet demands certain disclosures, and address the importance of narrative from the perspective of not only the litigant, but also those who are impacted by the litigant?s case: the decisionmaker, court officials and, eventually, those who read family court opinions.

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#MeToo movement changed the discourse regarding sexual assault and harassment primarily through the power of women?s stories of their own experiences. Using both traditional rhetorical and more advanced storytelling frameworks such as ?storyworlds,? this presentation will analyze which techniques helped #MeToo?s stories be more persuasive, which led to the backlash that followed, and what techniques will help it move forward.

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How can we honor clients? traumatic experiences while also serving as effective legal advocates? This presentation will discuss the tension between effective legal advocacy and trauma-sensitive storytelling and provide trauma-sensitive legal storytelling techniques inspired by neurobiology, clinical psychological techniques, literary devices, and the lived experiences of clients and advocates.

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Traditional case briefing focuses on the text of the opinion?how courts frame and resolve legal issues. This presentation explores how to use case briefing to investigate bias and oppression in the law. By looking at historical context and/or re-imagined judicial opinions, teaching case briefing this way asks students to consider the stories that judges don?t tell.

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Drinks: 6:00 p.m; Dinner: 7:00 p.m.

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