Everyone is constantly bombarded by persuasive messaging—only some of which works. It’s not just advertisers who want us to buy or politicians who want us to vote or donate. It’s also friends and colleagues who want us to support their ideas.
Persuaders today have found more and more sophisticated ways of reaching us, even if the messages themselves are often as crude, fallacious, and misleading as ever. It’s essential for us to think critically about the messages we encounter. It’s largely a matter of technique.
Lawyers in particular must differentiate between arguments that might work for a demagogue’s mass audience (you see these all the time) and those that might persuade a judge (you see this level of refinement much less often). They’re two very different things.
Meanwhile, you mustn’t be hampered by the bad old habits that generic legal writers use. [Now comes Stephenson Motors Inc. (“Defendant” or “Stephenson Motors”) etc.] It bores. It’s repulsive. Instead, to be effective, you must attain the art that conceals art—persuasion that actually works on sophisticated readers.
Human consciousness has forever been changed by communication technology. Attention spans have been shortened by the sheer volume of information competing for people’s attention. Lawyers and judges aren’t immune.
So it’s a balance of the old and the new: the classic means of solid argument made hyperefficient for modern readers. Today’s legal world demands a new perspective on persuasion.
That’s our focus—and it should also be yours.