Building Character

Building Character: A Legal Storytelling Primer on Character and Character Development is specifically designed as an easy-to-read and concise, yet comprehensive, primer for law students and seasoned lawyers who wish to improve their legal storytelling skills, particularly with regard to the creation and development of believable characters. The book explains the importance of storytelling in the law and examines the parts of an effective legal story. It identifies common character archetypes and offers guidance as to which archetypes should be employed or avoided in legal stories.

Finally, it identifies various tools (description, dialogue, and action) that a legal storyteller can use to develop the characters in legal documents, trials, and appellate arguments. Moreover, the primer delves into ways that a lawyer can use character to further her legal strategy in a case, including chapters on presenting a client as likeable and/or sympathetic; portraying a client as embroiled in a struggle with some aspect of herself; making an unlikeable client a proxy for a "reified idea"; presenting a client in a negative light; and using character to create friction with a harmful ending suggested by a stock story.

The primer was designed for both law students and seasoned lawyers. Recent law school graduates can take this primer with them to use in practice. Furthermore, the primer's simple and concise style and comprehensive nature will make it easy for more seasoned lawyers to use the primer to hone the nascent character development skills they have acquired since entering law practice.