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Dr. JoAnne Sweeny & Dan Canon
ABSTRACT: Telling a client’s story is an essential part of client representation. Legal storytelling provokes empathy in judges and juries and helps convince them of the rightness of the client’s perspective. Civil rights attorneys, however, tell their client’s story in a way that takes into account the needs of similarly situated others, which may conflict with their client’s needs. Using the watershed case Obergefell v. Hodges, this article examines the strategies and pitfalls civil rights lawyers may encounter when telling a client’s story that they know will impact an entire group of people who also want their rights vindicated.