ABSTRACT
When lawyers think of stories, they think first of how to arrange and recount the facts of their client's pre-lawsuit plight or they think about the unfolding facts of the litigation itself. But legal briefs and lawyer's arguments are filled with other kinds of stories and, in particular, with stories about the law itself. When law stories are structured as journeys of progress or as birth narratives, they present familiar, comfortable, and reassuring plots that revolve around "the law" itself as the main character. Stories about judges and their roles in the judicial process often support the brief writer's plot about the law's development and his characterization of a particular judge as a hero or villain. Whether statutory or common law, regulatory or constitutional, all laws are the outcome of a series of events and actions taken by characters after a Trouble or conflict arose. So, all laws provide the necessary conditions for storytelling.
