Option A: Just embed a full YouTube. Completely legal and no offense. Option B: Modify and use a part. Completely illegal if you do it without the explicit permission of the original owner of this YouTube. In previous courts, we have discussed the fact that legislators, judges and administrators always have discretion when applying the law. This means that a lawyer must not only provide a plausible interpretation of the law, but also convince him to exercise that discretion in favour of his clients. This, in turn, forces the lawyer to think about how legislators, judges and administrators perceive her arguments. In this blog post, we`ll first look at how lawyers really think (and how this differs from the common image that lawyers rationally evaluate all the relevant facts of a case) and how relevant this can be to allow you to make compelling arguments. Next, we will consider ways to take into account the fact that lawyers do not always decide on rational grounds; In particular, we will talk about “legal storytelling,” which can help you make your argument more accessible and persuasive than a “pure” doctrinaire argument could be. In mainstream jurisprudence, it is often assumed that jurists make rational decisions after carefully weighing all arguments (in this sense, Ronald Dworkin described the judge as “Hercules” in his book “Law`s Empire”). However, we have already come across a number of examples where legal decisions are actually influenced by factors other than rational arguments, including the physical condition of judges (remember “hanged” judges?), their beliefs and prejudices, or institutional dynamics.
In other words, lawyers are also human beings. An important implication of understanding lawyers as human beings is to be aware of how people think; And people don`t always think rationally. Despite some skepticism, applied legal storytelling is beginning to gain traction in the world of legal education. Dozens of papers on the topic have been published over the past five years, and the third biennial conference on legal storytelling was held earlier this summer at the University of Denver. Several Rutgers-Camden law professors spoke at the conference. Metaphors like these shape how we understand all sorts of phenomena (legal and non-legal). Metaphors may be necessary to understand complex social phenomena as well as abstract (e.g., legal) concepts, but they can also set limits to how we think about them. For example, if your legal argument does not conform to the metaphorical form usually used to conceptualize a particular phenomenon, you may have a hard time convincing others of your point of view. You can deal with dominant metaphorical representations in several ways: And what if we only want part of the video, save it and have it on our own server? Is it legal to use? A compelling legal argument works the same way a compelling story does. So much so that one could say that their overlapping functions follow their common forms. These underlying forms are by no means equivalent, but their corresponding anatomy shows how good stories and good lawyers convince us. The Rutgers School of Law-Camden offers a course for second- and third-year law students called “Advanced Legal Writing: Constructing Narratives,” but parts of this course are also integrated into other classes.
Students will revisit the topic in their legal writing, skills, and clinics courses. “Storytelling is really part of general legal skills, as is legal analysis, logic, and reasoning,” says Ruth Anne Robbins, clinical professor of law and director of law programs at Rutgers-Camden. “We say the structure of the story and the storytelling is part of that. History and logic are not in conflict; One does not exclude the other. Everything lawyers write, every argument they make, comes back to a topic and flows like a story. If the purpose of your story is to educate a supervising lawyer on a sensitive legal issue, then it`s your job, much like Melville did in Moby-Dick, to constantly engage your reader with the details of the (often dry) topic. Also, you need to find a way to do so without sacrificing clear structure and tone, overshadowing the details of your analysis, or obscuring the meaning of your conclusion. (Balancing these concerns, along with other subtle and often competing demands for written deliverables, is a bit like Captain Ahab chasing the white whale: a lifelong pursuit and not an easy task.) Think for a few minutes about how these cognitive biases can influence legal decision-making and the strategies you could use to counter them! Can you think of examples, for example in your area of expertise? If you`re interested in the topic, you should also check out this long list of cognitive biases. This point can be illustrated as follows: Choose a controversial political issue – for example, the treatment of refugees, the economic crisis or climate change; Do you believe that people (including you and me) form their opinions on these issues solely on the basis of a cold assessment of all the facts, or are other factors (eg,.