"It's much like writing a screenplay with someone else and that's how we view it, I think"
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What Darden slips into this seemingly casual line is a radical reframe of legal work: not as solitary truth-seeking, but as collaborative authorship under pressure. Comparing courtroom strategy to “writing a screenplay with someone else” drags the trial out of its marble temple and into a writers’ room, where ideas are pitched, revised, cut, and reshaped to satisfy an audience. That’s not cynicism so much as candor about the medium. Trials are narratives with rules. Juries don’t receive “facts” raw; they’re handed a story whose pacing, character logic, and emotional clarity have been engineered.
The phrase “with someone else” does the real work. It acknowledges constraint and compromise: co-counsel, investigators, experts, and the client all pulling on the same plot thread. Darden isn’t claiming control; he’s describing negotiated authorship, the way legal arguments become a patchwork of voices and priorities. “That’s how we view it” widens the frame from personal habit to team culture, hinting at the prosecutorial mindset of building a coherent arc rather than winning isolated points.
In Darden’s world - and his name carries the O.J. Simpson-era shadow of courtroom-as-spectacle - the screenplay metaphor also nods to performative reality. Lawyers stage moments, anticipate twists, and plan reveals because persuasion is temporal. The subtext is uncomfortable but accurate: justice, as experienced by the public, often turns on who tells the cleaner story, not who holds the cleaner truth.
The phrase “with someone else” does the real work. It acknowledges constraint and compromise: co-counsel, investigators, experts, and the client all pulling on the same plot thread. Darden isn’t claiming control; he’s describing negotiated authorship, the way legal arguments become a patchwork of voices and priorities. “That’s how we view it” widens the frame from personal habit to team culture, hinting at the prosecutorial mindset of building a coherent arc rather than winning isolated points.
In Darden’s world - and his name carries the O.J. Simpson-era shadow of courtroom-as-spectacle - the screenplay metaphor also nods to performative reality. Lawyers stage moments, anticipate twists, and plan reveals because persuasion is temporal. The subtext is uncomfortable but accurate: justice, as experienced by the public, often turns on who tells the cleaner story, not who holds the cleaner truth.
Quote Details
| Topic | Teamwork |
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