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Quick thread about something I've been thinking about for a while: Introductions and summaries.
These are key pieces of a brief, but a lot of lawyers, new and old, don't really know what they are *for.*
And that comes back to a piece of advice a lot of us have received, but has probably proven elusive for a lot of us.
"Tell me what you're gonna tell me, tell me, and then tell me what you told me."
"Tell me what you're gonna tell me, tell me, and then tell me what you told me."
This is the justification given for the traditional essay structure: why we have an introduction, a body, and a conclusion. And, uh, it isn't all that helpful.
*Why* should I have to tell you something I'm about to tell you again? What is the dang point?
The answer to that question is seldom given, but it makes sense when you consider things from your reader's perspective.
Your reader knows NOTHING about the thing you wrote before they read it. And before they picked it up, they were thinking about other things: grocery lists, misbehaving children, sports. Maybe sports. Or more sports.
You gotta get you and your reader into the same place. For a legal brief, you have to orient your reader in the facts of the case and the law that controls it. And that is what intro and summary pieces do. They're maps that connect writers and readers.
They put the reader into a place where they are (1) ready and (2) hopefully willing to accept your ideas.
And that is because if you just launch into the argument without some orientation, you are asking your reader to do too much all at once.
They have to (1) understand the controlling legal principles (which they may not know in advance); (2) understand which factual details are the hinge points on which all else depends; and (3) why your thoughts on the thing are better than the other guy's.
And they have to do that AS THEY READ THESE DETAILS.
That is a lot of work on your reader's best day. And it isn't possible for even the best-written argument.
Say your argument builds on stacking three legal principles, or stands on three independent grounds. The reader won't know grounds two and three exist while they read ground one.
They'll be confused. And their confusion will remain until they reach those points, which means they didn't get much out of reading your first two points. Thus, they missed A LOT of content of your brief. They have to go back and reread.
And being busy people, they kind of hate you.
This is not fertile ground for persuasion.
The reader who has received *education* on your position in advance knows what to expect. They know how the argument builds. They know what points to expect. The argument fits into prefabricated spots in the reader's brain. It is easier to accept. It is easier to understand.
It is naturally persuasive.
So intros and summaries are passively persuasive.
But they can actively persuade too. You can plant a seed. If I tell you in an introduction, say, why its vitally important that deed records be super clear and the rules for them be really predictable (after all, people will be reading them after we're all dead)...
you, the reader, are primed to be on the lookout for features of the lower court's ruling that make reading deeds harder, and you're likely to think that a ruling that did muddy the waters for reading deeds is a problem.
Your burden of persuasion goes down. The other side's burden goes up. So those little slots ready for your argument already have a nice soft, velvet lining. And the argument fits right in.
