How to Write an Effective Courtroom Scene in Fiction

The drama of a courtroom has always been a source of inspiration for writers. Many classic novels involve lawyers and their profession. From Charles Dickens’ Bleak House to Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird to the bestselling oeuvre of John Grisham, you can’t throw a rock in a bookstore[1] without hitting something touching on the law.

(5 Tips for Writing Action and Fight Scenes.)

This is no coincidence. Courtrooms are where families are put together or torn apart. Where fortunes are won and lost. Where justice is served.[2] They are the places where conflict is resolved—and resolving a core conflict is the goal of most novels. So, it’s only natural you’d want to use that setting to resolve your conflict.

I have been practicing law since 1994 as a prosecutor, a defense attorney, a civil attorney, and a judge. I have a home court[3] advantage in writing courtroom scenes, since I’ve spent most of my adult life inside one. But what if you haven’t? How can you write an effective courtroom scene?

Write What You Know—and If You Don’t Know, Learn It.

The old saw “write what you know” is an old saw for a reason. When you write what you know, you are more likely to write authentically. If you haven’t had a career in a courtroom or experienced litigation yourself, that doesn’t mean you can’t get to know what happens inside a courtroom. In the U.S., courtrooms are generally open to the public. Just show up and watch. Go to your county courthouse and take a peek at what’s going on. Even if you’re not a participant, you can be an eyewitness.

While you’re there, take notes. It won’t take long before you see which lawyers are effective. Make note of their speech patterns and how they move about the courtroom.

Lawyers are regular people[4] and may be more moved by flattery than most. I don’t have data, but anecdotal evidence tells me that a good 75% of us have an unfinished novel in a desk drawer somewhere. Approach someone who has impressed you, fawn over their performance for a few sentences, then explain you’re a writer who is trying to get a courtroom scene correct. Then offer to take them out for coffee. I promise they’ll likely answer your questions.

Likewise, judges may very well be willing to provide insight. It’s lonely being a judge: You have to hide in your chambers and not talk to anyone for fear that you’ll be accused of playing favorites. If someone interesting comes along that wants to tell them what a good job they did and ask questions about how they did it, they’re likely to go along with it, just to have an audience if for no other reason.

If you can’t find a lawyer or a judge to help you, wander into the nearest law school common area and find a law student or professor.

Of course, knowing what questions to ask is another question altogether. Hopefully, this article can help serve as a basic guide.

Learn the Vocabulary

What most writers get wrong is the technical points. Court is one of the most rigid, rule-based places I’ve ever experienced. It’s a place where deadlines are truly do-or-die. Legalese is a language that looks like English, may even use some of the same vocabulary as English does, but it isn’t the same. The definitions of words are all very precise.

Take, for example, the word “guardian.” Most of us use that word to mean any caretaker of someone in need of caretaking. In the law, however, it only refers to a specific person who has been court approved and ordered to be in charge of the legal (not financial) interests of another. A step-parent, then, would not be a guardian. Lay characters may use the word “guardian” as normal humans would; your lawyer characters would not.

“Court” is also an umbrella term. There are Superior Courts, Supreme Courts, Probate Courts, Municipal Courts, Family Courts, Appellate Courts, etc. They all have their own function and jurisdiction, and each state has a variation on what that court is called. For example, if you were fighting about someone’s will in Georgia, you’d do it in Probate Court; in New York, you’d do it in Surrogate’s Court. If you’re going to set a scene in a courtroom, make sure it’s the right one.

Certain otherwise antiquated Latin phrases are in common use. Voir dire, for example, means to question someone to determine their fitness for a particular person. You voir dire a juror. You voir dire an expert. Prosecutors never dismiss charges—they nolle pros them. Nolle pros is short for nolle prosequi, which means to nullify the prosecution.

Check out Lori B. Duff’s Devil’s Defense here:

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Learn the Procedure

Civil procedure is difficult—it was by far my lowest grade in law school. No one expects you to be an expert, but if you’re going to write about civil law,[5] you need to know the basics about courtroom procedure. You need to know who sits where and who goes first. 

Nothing will rip a courtroom scene out of the land of authenticity like surprise witnesses and out of turn testimony. Yet nothing is more common in fiction. Once you’ve written a scene, have one of those lawyers and/or judges and/or law students you’ve met read it over. They’ll point out how to fix what you’ve got wrong.

Rules of evidence are even trickier. If a lawyer is going to stand up and shout “objection,” you need to know what they are objecting to. Which isn’t the same as the testimony being objectionable in a lay sense. 

For example, “hearsay” isn’t just something someone said outside of a courtroom. It has to be offered for “the truth of the matter asserted” and not one of about a billion exceptions. Also, only qualified experts[6] can give opinions.

Edit What You Hear

If you’ve spent any time in a courtroom, you’ll learn that a good 90% of what goes on is boring. Yet the boring part is often the most important. Rather than spell out all that procedural hash, that’s a great opportunity to get into the heads of your characters and see how they are reacting to it. Are they nervous? Bored? Thinking about lunch?

Closing Argument

Law school is three years for a reason. There’s a lot of stuff to learn. After you get out of law school and pass the bar, it usually takes about two years before you gain competence at being a lawyer. So, if you don’t find yourself an expert after watching courtroom procedures for a few afternoons, don’t worry about it. No one is expecting you to write a transcript, and transcripts are generally dull. You can paint in broad strokes here. Just make sure you’re using the proper pallet.

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[1] Please don’t throw rocks in bookstores. Books—and bookstores—are precious things.
[2] Or not.
[3] No pun intended.
[4] Despite their unironic use of words like “whereunto”.
[5] Civil law is everything that isn’t criminal law. If it isn’t a crime, and it is in a courtroom, it’s civil law.
[6] Like Mona Lisa Vito in My Cousin Vinny—one of the few lawyer movies that gets it right.