Harry Potter, Ruby Slippers and Merlin: Telling the Client's Story Using the Characters and Paradigm of the Archetypal Hero's Journey
| Publication year | 2006 |
I. Introduction
What can Harry Potter(fn1) teach us about how to represent our clients? Potentially, quite a lot. Although it might seem odd to imagine the bright young wizard flying his
This Article focuses on the relationship of mythology and folklore heroes to everyday lawyering decisions regarding case theory when the audience is a judge or panel of judges rather than a jury. Because people respond-instinctively and intuitively-to certain recurring story patterns and character archetypes, lawyers should systematically and deliberately integrate into their storytelling the larger picture of their clients' goals by subtly portraying their individual clients as heroes on a particular life path. This strategy is not merely a device to make the story more interesting, but provides a scaffold to influence the judge at the unconscious level by providing a metaphor for universal themes of struggle and growth. Folklore and mythology are already part of the doctrine in other disciplines that rely on persuasive techniques, such as screenplays, political campaigning, and advertising.(fn7) These disciplines have absorbed the lessons of heroic archetypes because we respond viscerally to certain story patterns unconsciously. We respond regardless of age;(fn8) for example, toddlers react to the classic animated Disney movies.(fn9) Adults respond similarly to the narratives of their religious texts. Thus, the use of the metaphoric hero's journey provides one potential and powerful option in the arsenal of lawyers' persuasive techniques.
According to linguistics experts, summoning the imagery of a hero employs metaphoric reasoning.(fn10) Metaphors are effective because they act as a mechanism that allows us to "understand one domain of experience in terms of another," and the understanding takes place in the ge-stalt of universal experience.(fn11) We are, then, left with the notion that we as lawyers should master the elements of persuasive and epic storytelling regardless of whether our audience is a jury or a legally-trained judge. As Professor Steven Winter wrote, "[t]he attraction of narrative is that it corresponds more closely to the manner in which the human mind makes sense of experience than does the conventional, abstracted rhetoric of law."(fn12) The story is not a parlor trick used to draw attention away from the logic of law. It is part of the logic itself.
Legal literature has addressed the concept of "hero," but not as a foundation for client-centered lawyering and not for a judicial audience. Books and articles have been written on the use of storytelling as a narrative technique injury trials(fn13) and as a way to present stories of communities in crisis.(fn14) Other legal publications discuss ethics and the telling of client stories in other contexts.(fn15) Articles in smaller publications such as bar journals have used the concept of heroism to characterize lawyers or judges on the occasion of their professional retirement.(fn16)
Moreover, although many law professors, lawyers and judges have used the word "hero" in their law review or practitioner articles or in published cases, most often the reference is to another lawyer or to a judge. We are not afraid to characterize a lawyer or judge as "pioneering" a field or policy in law. Lawyers, as client advocates, are sometimes themselves portrayed as heroes representing supreme underdogs.(fn17) In related fashion, trial advocacy experts have touched upon the hero's journey in terms of jury argumentation theories, or to review works of literature that discuss law; however, these do not necessarily fully address client theory.(fn18)
While those lawyer accolades are undoubtedly well deserved, lawyers can do more with the heroic archetypes than merely call upon their imagery when describing one of our own. The potential to use heroic imagery as a form of persuasion extends beyond merely jury presentations to also include times when the judge is our audience. This Article adds to the discourse by beginning a conversation about what might be termed "applied legal storytelling." The term pertains to ideas of how everyday lawyers can utilize elements of mythology as a persuasive technique in stories told directly to judges-either via bench trials or via legal writing documents such as briefs-on behalf of an individual client in everyday litigation.
Parts II and III of this Article will review legal storytelling from a fiction writing perspective and will introduce the mythological and psychological perspective of heroes. Part IV will explain the different types of heroic archetypes and show examples of how to select the appropriate hero type for a client. Part V will outline the universal journey and show examples of how a lawsuit may fit into the client's overall journey. In all but one example, the Article draws on more day-to-day lawyering scenarios than on seminal cases. Smaller cases are analyzed in order to demonstrate that lawyers can use heroic archetypes as a routine scaffold rather than as a tool reserved for only the exceptional client scenarios.
II. Basic Legal Storytelling Building Blocks
From the first year of law school and continuing in practice, lawyers are exhorted to "tell a good story" when they write briefs or argue in court.(fn19) This is good advice. In fact, any decent trial lawyer already knows that storytelling is a critical part of effective advocacy. We implicitly acknowledge that narrative is far more significant in law than merely one delivery method of human communication.(fn20) Psychologists are also moving towards the conclusion that all of our knowledge is contained in stories and in the mechanisms to construct and retrieve them.(fn21)
Although not necessarily included in all of the textbooks, the basic rubric of a story is also the stuff of law school lawyering courses.(fn22 ) Within the legal framework, a story has a few key elements: character, point of view, conflict, resolution, organization, and description.(fn23) The story must contain a cast of characters, and the author must choose to tell the story from someone's point of view. Each character has needs and goals. The author controls how much the audience knows about those needs and goals. The more skilled lawyers understand, of course, that their client is the protagonist of the story and that the story must be told from the protagonist's point of view.(fn24)
The next step that lawyers must take in persuasive storytelling is learning to develop the narrative of the client's character, and to describe the lawsuit in terms of where it fits into the framework of the client's needs and goals. Here is where lawyers should consider the concept of "hero." Framing the client's narrative as heroic in some sense provides a possible avenue for the lawyer to develop a strategy for character development, as well as possibly a meaningful type.(fn25)
III. A Primer on the development of Heroic Archetypes as a Discourse
Heroic archetype, the myth of the hero, has been introduced to everyday culture through the interdisciplinary studies of many individuals, but most famously by mythologist Joseph Campbell.(fn26) Campbell made his hypotheses and reached many of his conclusions by combining the psychological work of Carl Jung with earlier publications of nineteenth century anthropologists such as Adolph Bastian.(fn27)
Jung believed that individual and social behavior and thought have their roots in a common pattern of characters.(fn28) He emphasized the universal psychological forces working within the individual to shape his or her personality.(fn29) These archetypal patterns were present in every culture he studied and in each time period in recorded history. Jung saw these common recurring patterns as manifestations of what he called "the collective unconscious."(fn30) Anthropologist Adolph Bastian first proposed the idea that myths from all over the world seem to be built from the same "elementary ideas." Subsequently, Sir James Frazer similarly observed that there was an unexplainable similarity that existed in certain tribal rituals in tribes so separate that no contact had ever taken place. He concluded that the rituals encapsulated the...
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