Lawering. A Call for Some Punk in Our Advocacy

• Author: Scott Arnold
• Pages: 9-10

HEADNOTES

Published in Litigation, Volume 47, Number 4, Summer 2021. © 2021 by the American Bar Association. Reproduced with permission. All rights reserved. This information or any portion thereof may not

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LAWYERING

A Call for Some

Punk in Our

Advocacy

SCOTT ARNOLD

The author is assistant crown attorney with the

Toronto (Canada) West Crown Attorney’s Office.

The evening of March 30, 1974, changed

music history. Four skinny dudes from

Queens, New York, hit the stage together

for the first time. With their quick, short,

powerfully stripped-down songs, they ef-

fectively launched the incalculably influ-

ential punk rock genre.

The Ramones, and their electrifyingly

fresh take on rock, did not come out of no-

where. Like all movements, it was a reaction

to what had come before—a backlash against

the perceived excesses of mushy, early 1970s

rock. Meandering, over-produced, indul-

gently aimless solos, and songs played by

musicians who often were not particularly

talented, gave way to the punk revolution

and its focus on brevity and purity. Years

later, Tommy Ramone would describe the

band’s philosophy as “Eliminate the unnec-

essary and focus on the substance.”

Five decades earlier, a group of archi-

tects in Germany were at the vanguard

of another purity-embracing, orna-

ment-rejecting, less-is-more insurrec-

tion. The Bauhaus School and its world-

renowned directors were essential to the

creation and advancement of modernist

architecture—an epochal minimalist

movement, similarly motivated by a re-

jection of the perceived decadence of the

dominant styles of the day.

Both movements reflected perceptions

that things had become overdone and di-

luted and that, as a result, practitioners

had lost their punch.

Similarly, our courtroom methods

are ripe for a rethinking. Routine and

tranquilizing efforts at advocacy—long-

winded, repetitive, and inefficient—can

feel like an unavoidable, inherent part of

the process.

But it need not be that way. Many advo-

cates are guilty of talking more than they

Headnotes illustrations by Sean Kane