Narratives on Trial: Storytelling mastery in high-profile legal battles

Deborah V. Pagnotta | ULUstory, PBC

When Deborah was 5, her adventurous architect mother moved them from Oakland, California, to Accra, Ghana. Five years later, her mother’s boss, President Kwame Nkrumah, was overthrown by a military coup. Deborah was shipped off to a small boarding school in Europe. A year later, they moved to Los Angeles, then New Haven, then her mother sent her back to another boarding school in Europe, where she finished high school. Then, after a gap year in Detroit, she was off to Boston for college. With each move, she had to learn how to survive in a completely new culture – different languages, visuals, rules, values, even clothes, cultural references, fragrances, hairstyles.

Storytelling saved her – giving her, always the stranger, the gifts of making friends, perspective shifting, and listening skills. These skills have informed all her work as an adult: as a lawyer, trainer, mediator, professor, VP/HR, and entrepreneur. Her role in each has been to helping people communicate more effectively, past barriers, to connect, persuade, teach, team build, and manage conflict. How? Using stories.

So, in 2021, she founded ULUstory, a science-based storytelling platform to help every user easily and rapidly find, build and share their true stories to create sustainable trust, empathy and connection across barriers, even with people we don’t like. How? Neuroscience tells us that true storytelling, in a very particular format, is the most powerful communication tool by which humans can forge community. 47,000 years ago, cavepeople started telling stories to overcome hostility and create collaborative societies. ULUstory marries science, tech, and creativity to give everybody that power.

I. The Structure, Psychology, and Neurology of Storytelling in the Courtroom: Understanding how narratives influence perception, emotion, and decision-making processes | 1:30pm – 2:00pm

II. Narrative and Counter-Narrative Strategies: Crafting a coherent and persuasive legal narrative, while anticipating and dismantling the opposing counsel’s story | 2:00pm – 2:30pm

Break | 2:30pm – 2:40pm

III. Case Studies from High-Profile Trials: Analyzing successful and unsuccessful narratives from well-known legal battles | 2:40pm – 3:10pm

IV. Adapting Your Story for Different Legal Audiences: Judges, juries and the media | 3:10pm – 3:40pm