Convincing presentation of the evidence in argument on the facts.

• Jurisdiction: United States

Section 36. Convincing presentation of the evidence in argument on the facts.—The problem of effectively arguing facts boils down to so marshalling your evidence as to make it thoroughly convincing to the judicial reader. Basically, three steps are necessary: assertion, presentation, and conclusion. First you state what you intend to show. Next you set forth the evidence, using pertinent quotations from documents and testimony, stressing any inconsistencies in the case against you, and making full use of that most deadly of all comparisons, the parallel column technique. Finally you conclude, generally by restating your original assertion.

Whenever the case is at all complicated, it is well to divide up the several points you are making, and to make liberal use of argumentative subheadings, so that the direction of your thought is clear. Remember that what you are aiming at is to leave conviction in the minds of your readers, and remember also that no characterization, however apt, ever has the stark impressiveness of verbatim extracts from damaging testimony or from letters that the writer later wishes he had never written. And I repeat: Stress the inconsistencies in your opponent's documents and testimony, bear down on every self-contradiction in the record. For although of course it is the law that a very bad man may have a very good case, none the less courts are human and nobody loves a liar.

Bear in mind, however, that the technique of arguing facts is very different from that appropriate for stating facts. In writing the Statement of Facts (see Sections 23 to 28), the aim is to state the facts appealingly but straightforwardly, so that the effect derives from the selection and juxtaposition of the facts. Once the Argument is reached, however, the facts should be frankly argued and commented on. The only limitations are those dictated by good taste and professional standards (see Sections 28 and 83), and by the caution that on occasion a restrained argument may be more effective than one that seems to shout too much.

In the Statement of Facts, you get your color from the facts themselves; in the Argument, you get your effect either from arguing inferences from the undisputed facts or from frankly arguing to a conclusion from disputed facts. You do not add comments of your own in the first instance, you do in the second.

The foregoing principles can perhaps not be profitably illustrated except by taking actual briefs involving questions of fact, and...