 PDF | 153 Downloads |
Wayne Schiess
| PDF | 208 Downloads |
Danielle Tully
| PDF | 214 Downloads |
Amy H. Soled
Abstract: Effective advocacy requires telling a client’s story so that the factfinder finds in the client’s favor. Early in law school, students learn the importance of storytelling, and the ability to create a client narrative is an integral part of the legal profession itself. There are times, however, where attorneys should withhold the narrative, and one such occasion are hearings concerning attorney discipline. The primary purpose of attorney discipline is to instill faith and trust in the legal profession. By minimizing an attorney’s accountability, the story undermines this primary objective. There has been scholarship on the importance of storytelling, how and why it works. And there has been scholarship on the ethics of storytelling in terms of truthfulness and whether the client has input in the story being told. No scholarship, however, has assessed the role the narrative plays in attorney ethics hearings or whether the narrative should even serve a role. This article addresses this question and finds that narratives should play only a limited role in attorney ethics hearings. Specifically, they can and do serve a role in terms of sanctions and challenges to the ethical rules themselves. But when it comes to defending clients accused of violating their professional ethics, attorneys should refrain from introducing the narrative. In cases when attorneys are charged with ethical misconduct, the story—character, problem, resolution—do not matter. Why what happened happened is irrelevant and tarnishes the reputation of the legal profession, defeating the goal of the attorney ethics system itself.
| PDF | 505 Downloads |
Maria Termini
Abstract: Legal writers, like all writers, must make countless linguistic decisions. One key choice is whether to be positive or negative. A legal writer who looks for guidance in textbooks, style manuals, and the academic literature faces conflicting advice. Conventional wisdom holds that legal writers should be positive; however, recent legal writing scholarship has explored the benefits of negativity that stem from “negativity bias.” This article offers a fresh approach to the choice by distinguishing between two types of negative language used in legal writing: negation and negative valence. It then offers research, theories, and practical considerations relevant to each type of negative language as it applies to legal writing. Last, the article proposes six principles that can guide legal writers in choosing between positive and negative language.