The Trial Lawyer's Art
, by Schrager, Samuel Alan
- ISBN: 9781566397995 | 1566397995
- Cover: Paperback
- Copyright: 5/2/2000
How do lawyers sway jurors in the heat of a trial? Why do the best trial lawyers seem uncannily able to get the verdict they want? In answering these questions, folklorist Sam Schrager vindicates -- but with a twist -- the widespread belief that lawyers are actors who manipulate the truth. He shows that attorneys have no choice but to treat the jury trial, from beginning to end, as an artful performance: as storytelling combat in which victory most often goes to the man or woman who has superior control of craft.
Drawn from fieldwork in the Philadelphia courts and at the Smithsonian Institution's American Trial Lawyers program, The Trial Lawyer's Art gives a remarkable, in-depth look at this craft of performance. It examines how lawyers exploit a case's dramatic potential, how they enact mythically potent themes, how they project personal authority, and how they use cultural identity -- their own and their opponents' racial, gender, class, and local affiliations -- all to make themselves and their stories persuasive to a jury. Schrager depicts the performance
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