A winning legal argument works much like a compelling story. So much so, in fact, that we might say their overlapping functions follow their shared forms. These underlying forms are by no means equivalent, but their matching anatomy reveals how both good stories and good lawyers win us over.

Let’s take story first. What makes a riveting story? At least five essentials:

1. Setting: selected details to create a story world that invokes our senses and suspends our disbelief
2. Character: people who engender our empathy, who want or need, who struggle, and who change through conflict
3. Structure: conflict-driven and causally connected events that culminate in success or failure for the characters
4. Theme: a moral premise or underlying message about how we should live our lives
5. Style: the artist’s stamp of skill, creativity, and expertise that lends to the story’s believability

Now compare the essentials of legal argument, broadly speaking. What ingredients yield the most persuasive legal positions?

1. Details: selected facts to invoke our senses relevant to the legal dispute, or what we call “legally relevant facts”
2. Motives: parties in the legal dispute must engender our empathy – we must understand their needs, wants, and goals
3. Coherence: conflict-driven legal reasoning (i.e., legal argument) coupled with story to create “narrative-driven argument”
4. Theme: a moral premise or underlying message about how we should live our lives
5. Credibility: the lawyer’s believability, stemming from skill, practical wisdom, knowledge, and expertise

As we see, these two structures track one another in meaningful ways:

• Details – Setting: we select the right details to invoke the senses and create a believable, engaging world
• Motive – Character: we engender empathy for the struggling people at the center of this conflicted world
• Coherence – Structure: the conflict resolves through striving, confrontation, and change
• Theme – Theme: moral underpinning that gives larger meaning and connection to us
• Credibility – Style: skill, expertise, and credibility show in the work, the work of a professional who cares

Not a perfect overlap, by any means, but surely one worthy of our further study and reflection. The key differences, too, deserve our attention. This is yet another law-lit mission for us – to improve our understanding and practice of both law and literature by exploring their fundamental forms. These forms might help us tell better “legal stories” to serve our clients and the legal system, never failing our overarching duty to truthfulness and justice.