Chapter 14

• Jurisdiction: United States

Chapter 14

How to Storify Your Complex Case

Tell me a fact and I’ll learn. Tell me the truth and I’ll believe. But tell me a story and it will forever live in my heart.

—Native American proverb

Overview

We live in a constant flurry of stories. When we sleep, we dream stories. After getting out of bed each morning, we tell ourselves a story about how we think our day will unfold. At night we watch stories on television or read them in books. Studies show we spend half of our waking hours—about a third of our lives—watching and spinning stories in our heads. As you read this chapter, you will envision a story: the story of how you can apply to your complex case anything I write about storytelling.

We humans are genetically wired to be influenced by stories. It is called narrative transformation. Stories transform us emotionally and physically. Through narrative transformation, we become part of the story—as if the story were happening to us.

Bar none, storytelling is the best communication tool ever devised for persuasion. Nothing will replace the power of storytelling—including technology. If you and your team want to achieve the mission of your complex case, you must tell a story. Stories have the power to affirm, shape, and change beliefs. Good storytelling changes thinking and perspectives. Good storytelling is good advocacy.

This chapter begins by distinguishing fictional storytelling from purposeful storytelling—the kind of storytelling needed for a complex case. It then discusses some of the science behind storytelling, explaining how and why good stories burrow into our minds and literally change our brain chemistry. Finally, it covers some bedrock storytelling principles and offers ideas on how to apply these principles to storify your complex case.

Purposeful Storytelling

Purposeful storytelling is just what it sounds like: telling a story for a purpose. Purposeful storytelling for a complex case is harder than fictional storytelling for at least three reasons. First, the story of a complex case must be based on nonfictional evidence. The storyteller can’t make stuff up. (I litigated many cases, however, where my opponents made stuff up, and sometimes got away with it.)

Second, while fictional stories are built around a central character, often there is no central character in a complex case to build the story around. In the complex cases I handled, I mostly defended companies, not individuals. I had no character to build a story around. I had to build my stories around a faceless company and try to humanize that company.

Third, while most fictional storytelling aims simply to entertain, purposeful storytelling aims to influence an active response: to affirm a long-held belief, change a belief, or decide something (e.g., render a verdict).

Let’s be clear about what purposeful storytelling is not. It’s not about inductive or deductive reasoning or logic: From this fact, this fact, and this fact we can deduce X. This is the default and go-to mode for most lawyers’ presentations. Lawyers gravitate to this mode because of their training. It’s also comfortable and safe for them. But it explains why so many lawyer presentations fall flat. It’s all logic, little emotion, and no story.

Facts and figures presented through logical reasoning don’t move people to action. Assuming your audience even pays attention, they will challenge your facts and figures. I am not saying you can ignore facts and figures; I am saying to make them part of the plot line of your story.

The Science of Storytelling

I work at ground zero for technology: Palo Alto, California. There has never been a time in all of human history where so much technology—e-mail, texts, Google, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram—compete for and command our constant attention. We can check e-mail, respond to a text, talk to our spouse or partner on the phone, and eat lunch all at the same time. These interruptions cause many of us to be compulsive multitaskers, tethered to technology.

Some people argue that the technology we have permitted to interrupt our lives has diminished our capacity to focus. They complain that they have lost the ability to pay attention to anything for more than just a few fleeting seconds because of all of the interruptive technology vying for their attention.

But there’s a phenomenon in our midst that belies that conclusion: Netflix.

Netflix has over 100 million subscribers around the world. On Sunday, January 8, 2017, Netflix reported that—in twenty-four hours—it had streamed over 250 million hours of movies and television shows to its members. That means that Netflix streamed a quarter of a billion hours of stories in just one day. On an average day, Netflix streams 125 million hours of stories. (Most of the traffic on the Internet is video streaming.)

What’s happening? In this society of constant interruptions, multitasking, and markedly diminished focus, we are spending millions of hours every day immersed in stories.

I define binge watching as viewing three or more shows in a row without moving from a single location—other than a trip to the bathroom or the fridge. Netflix reported that three out of every four subscribers who watched the first season of Breaking Bad watched the entire season of seven episodes in just one session. That’s about six straight hours of binge watching. Seasons 2 and 3—each with thirteen episodes—boasted an even higher binge rate: over 80 percent. That means over 80 percent of the subscribers binge watched an entire season, thirteen episodes, of Breaking Bad without getting off the couch.

That requires an amazing amount of focused attention! We certainly have not lost our ability to pay attention. We pay attention to good stories. All of the distractions and interruptions we have allowed into our lives cannot replace the transformative power of story.

Stories change our brains’ chemistry

Paul Zak, a neuroeconomist at Claremont Graduate University, recruited students to participate in a study to assess how story alters brain chemistry.⁴³ The students were asked to read a sad and compelling story about a father and his terminally ill son. Blood samples from the students were drawn before and after they read the story. Immediately after reading the story, the students were also asked to donate money to a charity serving sick kids.

After reading the story, the students’ blood samples showed spikes of cortisol, the stress chemical in our brain, and oxytocin, the empathy chemical in our brain. The more oxytocin the subjects’ brains released, the more money the cash-strapped students donated.

Zak’s study confirms that stories change our brain chemistry. The study’s results echo what others say about the power of story. Jonathan Gottschall (author of The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human⁴⁴) writes that when we become absorbed watching Breaking Bad or are immersed in a good novel, “We experience zero daydreams per hour. We’re lulled into a state psychologists call ‘narrative transformation.’ . . . [S]tory acts like a drug that reliably lulls us into an altered state of consciousness.”⁴⁵

As I...