Telling the Client's Story
by: Rdenfeld • March 29, 2011 • no comments
Say you have a fictional client named Sally who has Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder. How are you going to tell the story of Sally?
To start with you need an outline. I believe the simplest structure is best. Save the fancy flashbacks and wordsmithing. Tell the story cleanly, simply and with a minimum of fuss. Here is a simple structure:
1) Lead. Introduce your client and summarize what you will tell the reader.
"Sally Lumsford is age 28. She has suffered from Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder her entire life. Despite her deficits, Sally has many strengths. She hopes to lead a productive life someday."
2) Body: This is most easily done by following a linear, chronological structure: prenatal, birth, childhood, adulthood, etc. For a longer report it helps to break it down in themes. For instance, you could have a childhood including a section on Sally's education, and another section on her abuse at the hands of her mother. Titling out the themes helps. "Birth" "Education," "Family abuse."
3) Wrap: Summarize what you just told the reader. Here is where you can offer suggestions for treatment and help, when applicable.
"The school system and the justice system failed Sally. According to doctors, Sally would thrive with structure, routine and accommodations for her learning challenges."
What are some effective methods to tell the story? One is using detail. Details bring a story to life. Details show people what happened. There is a saying among writers, "Show not tell." It is always more effective to draw a picture with words than to tell someone something.
Say you want to explain Sally's educational struggles to a jury. You could say something like this:
"Sally failed all her high school classes. She dropped out at age 15."
But that's boring, and it makes it sound like your client chose to fail. It would be far more effective to use details that demonstrate why Sally struggled in school:
"Even as a teenager, Sally had to count on her fingers. When asked to make change for a dollar, she would freeze. Her brother Mike remembers how once Sally was humiliated at the store when she couldn't count out forty cents. The clerk snidely asked her, 'What are you, retarded?' Sally dropped out, he says, because teachers and students ridiculed her for being 'stupid.'"
Choosing our anecdotes is important when telling the story. We don't want to load on so many details the story gets bogged down. But neither do we want to skimp. A general writing rule of thumb is to work in threes. One detail feels paltry, two feels odd, and four is too many. But three is about right.
You can use three longer anecdotes, but details can also be short and sweet. For instance:
"Sally was the sweetest girl, her neighbor Mrs. Crumford remembers. She would help around her in the yard. She liked to pull weeds. But she acted scared when it was time to go home."
One effective way to obtain details is to elicit sensory images from your client and witnesses. What did it feel like? How did it smell? What did it look like? How did it sound? This can lead to very descriptive stories.
"Sally can vividly remember the first time her mother beat her for being 'stupid.' She says, 'It was close to Christmas. I'm not sure of the year. I'm not good with numbers. Mom was drinking a lot. She started hitting me with the belt like always. But then it was like something happened and she kept hitting harder and she pushed my face in the dresser and she was sitting on me and hitting me so hard blood came from my nose. Then she put me in the closet, the one with little gold flowers in the wallpaper.'"
Using quotes is a powerful form of storytelling. Using quotes gives your story credence. It gives your story voice. In the story above, Sally not only shares her mother's abuse, she admits her deficits by saying she isn't good with numbers. Having our clients admit their challenges shows humility. This is the opposite of what the judge and jury fear, which is a sociopathic client. When we show that our clients are able to reflect upon their lives, we create a link between them and the listener.
Word choice is also important in storytelling. The words we choose can inadvertently betray our own biases or lack of education. Or they can gently educate. Consider these two sentences:
"Sally was never on time."
Or
"Sally couldn't tell time."
Words can reframe our client's actions. We should always remember that our clients often make terrible mistakes largely because they have significant challenges. Few people wake up every morning and cheerfully proclaim, "I think I'd like to screw up today." It is our job to discover why our clients act the way they do and then communicate this knowledge. Maybe Sally has a history of not showing up for court on time because she can't tell time. We can even explain her embarrassment over her deficits. This is an especially helpful technique when we have clients who mask their challenges with bravado, obnoxious behavior or stony-eyed stares.
"Sally doesn't like to admit she can't tell time. When asked what time it is, she pretends she didn't hear or shuts down. 'Sometimes I don't know what to say so I just sit there.'"
It is okay to use declarative sentences in storytelling. The reader needs to feel you have mastery over the subject. Avoid overly weepy or zealous language. Take an authoritative stance. You are the expert on your client: not the DA, not the judge, not the jury. We don't need to belabor the mistakes of the client, but we can't ignore them, either. Admitting the faults of the client strengthens our story and defuses concerns we are pie-in-the-sky idealists:
"From age 15 to 25 Sally lived in a series of apartments, sleeping on the couches of friends. She had multiple petty arrests. She would use drugs to fit in, she said. But soon her use spiraled into addiction. She got a job at Taco Bell but was fired when she couldn't learn the cash register. She met the man who was her first pimp at the bus stop."
When telling the story we should always consider our audience. Who is your reader? What do you want your audience to take away from your report? In this case perhaps we want to educate them that Sally had profound deficits as well as a traumatic history. Everything that goes in our report should support that story. Everything that detracts needs to leave.
What about sources? A believable story has a nice mixture of sourcing and clear, easy-to-read sentences. Too many names in a report clog it up. The reader can't keep track of all these people. They get frustrated and give up.
For instance, this sentence has name constipation:
"Her parole officer, Mr. Patrick Jones, her counselor Ms Andrea Zusman and her work trainer, Mrs. Judith Harper-Steeply all feel that Ms. Lumsford has positive traits."
That gave me a headache just writing it. The second one feels lighter:
"Several who have worked with Sally believe she can succeed. Among them are her parole officer, her counselor and her work trainer."
Speaking of names, using first names personalizes our clients. When possible, use a shortened name, like Alex instead of Alejandro. Studies show that people have strong biases against names perceived as black or ethnic. If your client's name is DeShawn, they might be more likely to think he is a criminal than if you call him Shawn. It is food for thought.
While we tell our client's stories, it is just as important to include the positives as well as the negatives. Judges and juries hear sob stories and roll their eyes. Yes, our client was a victim. But people are tired of hearing what sounds like a bunch of whining and blaming. They desperately want to hear the positives. What are the client's strengths? What makes them a special, unique and salvageable person, despite or even because of their deficits? Consider this:
"Sally has unusual artistic talent, says her brother. She can draw beautifully. Before her arrest, he says, he was helping her create a home-based card business. She would make the cards and he sold them on ebay. The business didn't make much money, he says, but that was okay because he was willing to have Sally live with him. Unfortunately, he says, their mother talked Sally into staying with her."
In this anecdote, then, we hit two birds with one stone: we conveyed something positive about Sally, but we also showed how her brother is still willing to be a resource for her.
You may be thinking, sure, this is all great for a fictional woman named Sally with a heart-rending diagnosis of Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder. But what about my client, a meth addict accused of robbery with a firearm? Try to make a story out of them apples.
It might help to assume that, after getting to know Sally, you find out the crime she was arrested for was the murder of her aging mother, whom she left to rot in her own feces. We need to step away from our client's accusations in order to tell their story with empathy. Your meth addict client accused of sticking a gun in someone's face may also have a story, one that is just as deserving of being told as our fictional Sally. Telling their stories doesn't mean we condone their acts: it means we explain how they came to be in that place. Understanding our client's stories is the bedrock of our representation of them.
Every client, no matter how impaired, has a strength hiding somewhere. There, but for the grace of the powers that be, goes a successful and happy person. If we remember that, we can comb back through their histories to find the redeeming factors, the constellations that a judge or jury will be drawn to out of hope. The client's story becomes a narrative arc: from detailing their invisible disabilities we arrive at a place of redemption. These details then become the stories that change hearts and minds.
Rene Denfeld is the author of four books, including the newly released Ask Me Why I Hurt, co-authored with Dr. Randy Christensen (Harper Collins, April, 2011). The New York Times Magazine published her groundbreaking work on cognitively impaired parents.
