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7 J. Ass'n Legal Writing Directors vii (2010)

handle is hein.journals/jalwd7 and id is 1 raw text is: Preface Once again, the Journal of the Association of Legal Writing Directors (J. ALWD) hopes to enrich, enliven, and encourage the study and practice of legal rhetoric and writing with the publication of its Fall 2010 issue. This issue brings together articles on the theme of metaphor and narrative with general articles emerging from the discipline of legal writing. J. ALWD Volume 7 includes twelve articles on subjects ranging from readers' reactions to persuasive storytelling in briefs to analysis of the rhetorical effects of oral argument questioning by the U.S. Supreme Court to document design that takes advantage of scientific and narrative prin- ciples; their authors include long-time leaders in the fields of legal writing and clinical teaching as well as practicing lawyers and academics from other disciplines. This issue truly provides a forum for conversation between the practice and the academy. Metaphor & Narrative But for metaphor, which allows us to gather them up, group them together, and contain them, our perceptions would remain as scattered as marbles thrown on the ground.' But for narrative, which allows us to link discrete events together, place them into a story line with a beginning and an end, and thus compose a coherent account of what happened, our lives would be constructed of One Damn Thing After Another2 In this issue, our authors show how better understanding of metaphor and story can help lawyers become more discerning as legal readers and more effective and persuasive as legal writers. For concepts with such persuasive power, metaphor and narrative have bad reputations. In some circles, not much movement has occurred in the long treatment of metaphor and narrative as mere literary devices, language tricks that put a gloss on legal reasoning, but add little of substance to an argument. On the other hand, the theoretical resurgence 1 This concept draws on the metaphors that the mind is a container and ideas are objects. See e.g. George Lakoff & Mark Johnson, Philosophy in the Flesh: The Emhodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western Thought 338 & 124-25 (Basic Books 1999). 2 Anthony Amsterdam & Jerome Bruner, Minding the Law 30-31 (Harv. U. Press 2000).

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