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Southern California
Personal Injury Attorney, Maurice L. Abarr
Any Good Lawyer Is a Storyteller
(Don’t Let Anyone Tell You Differently)
Ironically, most lawyers are surprisingly poor communicators. Most of them lose their communication skills during a torturous process called … law school.
In law school, you have to read volumes of case decisions filled with pretentious multi-syllabic words and hyper-formalized sentence structures. What does that do to your mind? It numbs it. It desensitizes it. Your mind becomes wrapped up in rules and procedures. You lose your humanity. The fire goes out.
But I’m lucky – I had my humanity revived. In 1998, I was invited to attend Trial Lawyers College – not a university, but a month-long workshop conducted by Gerry Spence, a litigator from Jackson Hole, Wyoming. There were 50 of us, from around the country. What we learned reignited that spark of humanity. The fire was lit again.
That August, I rediscovered who I was – and I discovered the art of Psychodrama.
Utilizing the services of mental health professionals trained and certified in the discipline, Mr. Spence recontextualized the practice of law. We were law students again; we learned that our purpose was to help clients heal wounds and damaged relationships. To do this correctly and meaningfully, we needed to be ourselves. We needed to know our clients personally and affirm their humanity in each relationship.
Mr. Spence simply advised us: If you cannot love your client, then you should not be representing your client.
He talked about Story – the importance of narrative in presenting a case to a jury. Before recorded history, people learned and conveyed wisdom through Story. We are still captivated by stories. Whenever anyone says “Once upon a time,” others will fall silent and listen. When you say “Let me tell you a story,” you see a similar effect.
After leaving Mr. Spence’s ranch, I continued to pursue the idea of Story. In 2002, I enrolled in a storytelling class at a local university. There were 9 of us in the class, and most of us became friends. In fact, 7 of us continued to meet after the class ended, and soon we started putting on story concerts at public venues. This deepened my experience in storytelling.
Today, I think that a good lawyer has to be a good communicator, and care deeply for his or her client. If I can powerfully express my client’s story, then jurors can personally relate to my client and his/her experience. If I can communicate how much I care for my client and move or rouse those present with his or her Story, we are on our way to Justice.
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