USER GUIDE (page 19)

Sponsored links

B. THE ARTIST, ARCHITECT, CARPENTER, AND INSPECTOR

Some people excel at expansionary thinking; others excel at contractionary thinking. Whichever applies to you, you can use devices to help you get into the right mindset at the right time.

For example, this toolkit uses a variation of a model that dramatizes the writing process.⁷⁴ In our version, as you ‘build’ your case, you adopt the personality of 1 of 4 characters: ‘The Artist’, ‘The Architect’, ‘The Carpenter’, and ‘The Inspector’. If you work through the entire toolkit, you will give each ‘character’ a turn at the front of your brain.

1. The Artist

‘The Artist’ uses the most expansionary mindset of our characters. Full of ideas, he jots ideas wildly and thinks creatively. He:

‘think[s] up the largest number of reasonable alternatives [and] … look[s] below the surface of the facts and law for deeper possibilities and meaning.’⁷⁵

When you think like ‘The Artist’, you ‘do your best if you think with intellectual freedom and a tolerance for chaos’. ⁷⁶

The Artist works on Step 1 when he collects the facts, Step 3 when he identifies all the possible issues, Step 4 when he brainstorms keywords, Step 5 when he identifies all possible sources of information, and Step 8 when he thinks of all the reasons the judge should decide in his favor. In this toolkit, a storm cloud represents The Artist’s mindset.

2. The Inspector

The Artist’s nemesis, ‘The Inspector’, uses the most contractionary mindset of the toolkit’s characters. He has:

‘a kind of critical energy … He’s been educated and knows a sentence fragment when he sees one. He peers over your shoulder and says, “That’s trash!”.'⁷⁷

You must keep The Inspector away from the other characters, especially The Artist:

‘Since judgment hinders imagination, separate the creative act from the critical one; separate the process of thinking up possible decisions from the process of selecting among them. Invent first, decide later.’⁷⁸

⁷⁴Betty S Flowers, ‘Madman, Architect, Carpenter, Judge: Roles and the Writing Process’ (1979) 44 Proceedings of the Conference of College Teachers in English 7. See also, Ruggero J Aldisert, Winning on Appeal: Better Briefs and Oral Argument (2nd ed, 2003) 124–5; Bryan A Garner, The Winning Brief: 100 Tips for Persuasive Briefing in Trial and Appellate Courts (2nd ed, 2004) 4–5.

⁷⁵Richard K Neumann, Legal Reasoning and Legal Writing: Structure, Style, and Strategy (5th ed, 2005) 304 (referring to ‘solution-generation’).

⁷⁶Richard K Neumann, Legal Reasoning and Legal Writing: Structure, Style, and Strategy (5th ed, 2005) 304 (referring to ‘solution-generation’).

⁷⁷Betty S Flowers, ‘Madman, Architect, Carpenter, Judge: Roles and the Writing Process’ (1979) 44 Proceedings of the Conference of College Teachers in English 7.

⁷⁸Thomas Michael McDonnell, ‘Playing Beyond the Rules: A Realist and Rhetoric Approach to Researching the Law and Solving Legal Problems’ (1998) 67 UMKC Law Review 285, 309. See also Richard K Neumann, Legal Reasoning and Legal Writing: Structure, Style, and Strategy (5th ed, 2005) 304 (‘[B]ecause solution-generation and solution-evaluation depend on contrary qualities, you must be careful not to let that critical skepticism—of which we teach so much—overwhelm your ability to imagine the widest range of possibilities’).