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Look To A Rabbi To See How To Advocate

While "What Would Jesus Do" might not be a completely adequate principle of advocacy, lawyers who try cases, to juries in particular, can learn a lot from Jesus’s storytelling tradition.

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john-balestriereWhile “What Would Jesus Do” might not be a completely adequate principle of advocacy, lawyers who try cases, to juries in particular, can learn a lot from Jesus’s storytelling tradition.

If you’ve read any of my columns in the last year, you have seen that our firm has a lot of rules. One of them, seriously, is the Jesus Principle.  This has nothing to do with following the principles He laid out at the Sermon on the Mount (though a lot of us do live by those or, more precisely, try to). But it does mean following the method of oral advocacy that Jesus used in teaching, especially when trying cases or conducting arbitrations.

Jesus was one of many itinerant teachers of his time, so when He came to a new town— with a bunch of young guys—telling people how they should live their lives and what the truth is, people were understandably skeptical of this thirty-year-old who claimed to be in the know. Lawyers, who advocate, especially those who try to juries, are not all that different.

Every arbitrator or judge is appropriately skeptical of the “truth” that private lawyers espouse, knowing that such lawyers are, in the end, hired to fight for their clients’ positions. Juries are even more skeptical—and goodness knows that the garbage media portrayals of lawyers as slick liars hardly help us. Why should they believe us?

So, yes, ask yourself, What Would Jesus Do? Jesus did not shove his views down people’s throats. Instead, He advocated for what proved to be one of the most radicals views in history on how to live our lives, how to relate to one another, and what our lives are about by doing two things: telling stories, and not telling the punch line. Rather than say, “Be good,” he told a story about how those in challenging situations learned to be good, even when it didn’t seem obvious how or, more, why to be good. He didn’t philosophize. He chose narrative, generally using examples that his listeners could understand—from the synagogue, or the market, or traveling between towns, or dealing with an oppressive empire.

And he didn’t end his stories with a “Thus and so, act this way.” I’m not a Biblical scholar, but in my Catholic school and later theology classes, I learned how we’re pretty sure that while the Gospels were decent attempts to get down what Jesus said, later writers almost immediately added to Jesus’s words, including frequently trying to explain what exactly Jesus meant about the workers in the garden, or the man who buried his treasure compared to the man who spent it, or the good man on the road to Jericho. We believe that the explanations of His parables were add-ons. Jesus instead simply told the story and then let His listeners figure it out. Trial lawyers should do the same.

Why did Jesus do this and why should we? Again, Jesus’s listeners were skeptical of him. Our judges and arbitrators and juries are quite skeptical of us. Don’t ram the moral of your story down their throats. Respect their intelligence and curiosity and let them figure it out. They will end up owning their conclusions—which you lead them to—so much more if you lead them to the moral of your story.

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The truth is not what the young rabbi said or what this hired gun lawyer said. The truth is what they figured out on their own.

John Balestriere is an entrepreneurial trial lawyer who founded his firm after working as a prosecutor and litigator at a small firm. He is a partner at trial and investigations law firm Balestriere Fariello in New York, where he and his colleagues represent domestic and international clients in litigation, arbitration, appeals, and investigations. You can reach him by email at john.g.balestriere@balestrierefariello.com.

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