*How to discover your client's story*
*Publication Date:* September 2009
*Volume:* 45-1
*Author:* Richard Schenkar
*Categories:* Practical resources, Client Relations, Internet, Resources

The details of your client's story will empower its presentation and
your confidence in delivering that emotional message effectively.
Accessing those details will benefit both you and your client. Both
folklore specialists and storytellers use questions to discover details
that enliven, delight, and document daily lives of characters both
mythical and real and the questions they use can help lawyers discover
and tell the stories of their clients' lives to judges, juries, and
other tribunals.

*Folklore Sources*

From the Smithsonian Institution comes a number of sources and guides
that aid in the collection, documentation, preservation, and
presentation of folklore. Many of them include interview questions and
hypertext links to other sources online. /Seeking the Source/, online at
http://smithsonianeducation.org/migrations/seeking/seekhome.html, is a
good overview that includes a focus on getting material from primary
sources like family members. Suggestions of questions to ask, interview
tactics, prudent ethical rules, and presentation ideas are available as
well. The detailed guide is the /Smithsonian Folklife and Oral History
Interviewing Guide/, online at
http://www.folklife.si.edu/education_exhibits/resources/guide/aspx. This
(more complete) guide includes forms to use and a glossary.

To get started quickly, you may want to get the short questionnaire at
http://www.ehow.com/how_2181918_list-questions-family-history-interview.html.
You may frame your interview with a biographical approach using the
questions at http://oldfashionedliving.com/bioquestions.html, add a
family-oriented approach with questions from
http://www.searchforancestors.com/ scrapbook/interview.html, and go
deeper with the long questionnaire at
http://genealogy.about.com/cs/oralhistory/a/interview.html.

*Storytelling Sources*

Professional storytellers and people who speak on business topics take
advantage of the lifetime of conditioning and acculturation we all share
in the acceptance of messages from stories. That is why they mine their
own lives and the lives of those with whom they are trying to connect
for familiar stories, legends, and other narrative tools already deeply
planted in their audience's conceptual garden. These tools are relevant
to lawyers because lawsuits are stories.

A source for questions that focus on family-oriented stories is
http://www.storyarts.org/classroom/roots/family.html.

August House, online at http://www.augusthouse.com, is a specialty
publisher of materials for storytellers (among other specialties). These
materials include guides to the effective gathering, conceptualizing,
presenting, and marketing of stories and storytelling. Of particular
relevance here is the book /Telling Your Own Stories (For Family and
Classroom Storytelling, Public Speaking, and Personal Journaling)/, by
Donald Davis (copyright 1963). By a series of prompts, relevant people,
places, and occurrences in your client's life may be probed for data
that may help you present your case more effectively. There is a focus
on the practical building blocks of memorable stories such as beginning
that commands attention, a flow that is compelling, a premise that
encapsulates the conflict at issue, and the verbal and conceptual
management of emotion throughout the process.