"Tell us a story": Ancient Rhetoric and the Power of Story-Telling in Legal Fiction

Abstract

The power of storytelling in the practice of law is a theme which resonates throughout Twentieth Century American legal fiction. Put simply, it's the idea that "whoever tells the best story wins the case." Storytelling can be a powerfully persuasive tool, prevalent in legal practice as a way to organize complex facts into simple truths. As law has always been my chosen career -- from the all-knowing age of eleven -- I chose to examine the power of storytelling in legal fiction, using four novels centered around four very different lawyers. The analysis goes beyond a simple study of whether lawyers win or lose their cases. In many situations, the study of law goes beyond the typified dramatic courtroom monologs, and thus I expand my study to include a variety of legal fictions. I begin with a standard, modem legal fiction -- John Grisham's bestselling legal thriller The Rainmaker, published in 1995. Many would view this as the typical legal fiction: the story centers around a trial with a lawyer as both the protagonist and narrator. From here, though, I move to a very different type of legal fiction in William Faulkner's Intruder in the Dust (1948), focusing on the power of stories in the pre-trial, discovery process of the legal system. Next, I examine Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird (1960), which, though focused on a lawyer in the middle of a trial, encapsulates the views of an entire community, thereby emphasizing the legal career as one that exists both inside and outside the courtroom. Lastly, I focus on the rhetorical powers of a lawyer-tumed-politician in Robert Penn Warren's All the King 's Men (1948). [From introductory section]