Let me preface this review by summarizing where I am coming from as a reviewer: I am not a lawyer, nor am I a law school faculty member. Rather, I am a social scientist studying legal education, a teacher of undergraduates who aspire to legal careers, and a former student of creative writing. These perspectives shape my views of Meyer's unique text, which is dedicated to the argument that storytelling is at the root of effective litigation practice. To make this argument, he draws on the field of narratology and a wide variety of legal and nonlegal stories to highlight five essential elements of story-craft (p. 4): scene, cast, and character, plot, time frame, and human plight, though the last of these—perhaps because it is so central to the practice of law—gets the least treatment. While his discussion of narrative theory would be familiar to anyone with creative writing training, he presents this material in a clear introductory fashion that makes it accessible to those outside the field.
To get a sense of what Meyer is doing in this text, let us consider his discussion of characters. He advocates for the use of stock film characters as models for the characters in legal storytelling, as characters in both genres of story are reductionist, time-limited, plot-driven, and constrained in the ability to explore consciousness. These characters, then, become especially important for legal stories because of our societal tendencies toward fundamental attribution error, the likelihood that judges and juries will look to character as an explanation for behavior and a justification for punishment, the fact that motivations are considered to drive action and reflect character, and the propensity of jurors and other audiences to root for likeable characters (p. 73–74).
Another useful set of passages focuses on the difference between showing and telling in narrative, as well as how to use shifts of perspective to integrate individuals' own words into a narrative. This section provides a helpful summary of different narrative points of view from which stories can be told, a resource that could be quite helpful to beginning storytellers. This chapter, focusing on style, is the most useful—and the most up-to-date—of the book. Meyer's chapter on setting is also quite useful, particularly, the dissection of the petitioner's brief in Reck v. Ragen, which shows how the structure of the factual narrative complements the structure of the legal argument. Meyer then compares Reck to Miranda v. Arizona, where a discussion of setting is absent, to show the importance of what is unseen.
For those new to storytelling, the text also provides other useful advice, such as beginning with the desired ending. But Meyer's argument is not only about constructing a story, it is also about the use of compelling language. For example, he emphasizes the use of rhyming-couplet aphorisms (p. 35) that are repeated throughout a closing argument. While Meyer refers to this practice as an element of plotting, it could equally be considered a rhetorical device to increase the persuasive power of a speaker. Yet the text does not do exactly what Meyer claims it does. He calls the text a primer, but I do not think a new lawyer could get very far using the book as a guide to craft his or her first law stories. Conversely, the text could be put to excellent use in a law & humanities classroom as a starting point for students to conduct similar narrative analysis of court filings and transcripts.
What is less successful is Meyer's assumption (p. 20) that readers will be familiar with older film and textual narratives. Today's law students and new lawyers—the presumed audience for this text—may find many of his nonlegal examples hard to follow. The legal examples, including detailed dissections of appellate briefs and closing arguments, are also older than might be preferable. Of course law is more backward-looking than many disciplines, but the use of some examples from within the past decade would have made the text more accessible and appealing to younger readers.
One particular legal example, which Meyer draws on repeatedly throughout the text, is particularly puzzling. This is the criminal trial of Louie Failla, who was convicted and sentenced to 10 years in prison for racketeering and who only avoided dying in prison because he obtained a compassionate release due to medical issues. While this case is quite compelling as an example of how the defense and the prosecution can make two different tales out of the same raw material, the defense's storytelling was clearly less successful than Failla would have desired. What Meyer does not address in relation to this example is that the most compelling legal storytelling in the world is useless if it cannot secure the desired outcome for the client. As I read and contemplated these examples, my thoughts kept returning to Janet Malcolm's (2011) incisive treatment of courtroom storytelling. Meyer mentions an earlier version of Malcolm's text in passing, but his work would have been profitably improved by the application of his narrative framework to her reporting.
