Winning by integrating with the unfolding story- Stephen Engel

Fairfax criminal lawyer Jonathan Katz was invigorated early on by entertaining others, including performing magic shows for children's birthday parties and performing musically, including with improvisational music. That helped make criminal defense a natural destination on Jon Katz's path, with the spontaneity required of the work, and the engaging, performing and entertaining involved on the road of persuasion. Jon recently looked up what his fellow college alum Stephen Engel was up to, and found that that for decades Steve has been writing for and producing television comedy. With persuasive storytelling being a big part of criminal defense, Jon invited Steve to interview on the Beat the Prosecution podcast, to discuss the story development and storytelling process, engaging the audience, and dealing with the overall creative process. 

Steve Engel has been a writer for such television series as Big Bang Theory, Mad About You, A.N.T. Farm, and Dream On. His interest in writing scripts goes back many decades. Steve and two other students led a class on comedy that Jon selected when entering college, which introduced Jon to such great writings as A Confederacy of Dunces, Catch-22, and Portnoy's Complaint. Jack Kerouac's On The Road -- of course not a humor piece, but with humorousness therein -- remains among Jon's favorite books, and underlines the virtual limitlessness of human imagination and wordsmithing. 

Steve talks about keeping the audience's attention, avoiding unnecessary ad-libbing, and working as a team to produce entertainment. One of the most risky things about criminal defense can be to put the defendant on the witness stand, where the accused does not have a script for what is to happen during cross examination, but only tips from their lawyer -- and the defendant's hunches -- about what might be asked. Nonetheless, good script writing and acting can help inform trial lawyers how to keep the audience interested enough so that the attorney's message gets persuasively conveyed, and not drowned out by other noise and ideas happening in the courtroom. 

Steve started as a lawyer, and has some ideas for lawyers' courtroom presentations. In the courtroom, the jury or judge will write the ending to the story. That is part of the thrill of victory and agony of defeat of trials. 

This episode is also available on YouTube at https://youtu.be/avQDPrT3JQw. 

This podcast with Fairfax, Virginia criminal / DUI lawyer Jon Katz is playable on all devices at podcast.BeatTheProsecution.com. For more information, visit https://KatzJustice.com or contact us at info@KatzJustice.com, 703-383-1100 (calling), or 571-406-7268 (text).

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