When leading a judge or juror along your path of reasoning, it is important that they are not required to guess what inferential leaps you want them to make. While it may seem burdensome in preparation, ever stepping stone along the path needs to be depicted.

This is the same requirement whether writing a brief or diagramming an argument. When I taught “Legal Writing” at Willamette Law School, two of the most important words were “So what?” If the attorney or witness cannot answer that implicit question by showing clearly how each statement precisely links to an explicit conclusion, the judge or jury will abandon the path of reasoning.

The argument map drawn from Dr. Tim van Gelder’s recent paper provides an opportunity to illustrate this principle.(http://rtnl.files.wordpress.com/2007/07/rationaleforrationale.pdf) Hopefully, this litigation argument map rigorously and simply provides the answer to the “so what?” question for every premise depicted. Don’t ask the judge or jury to fill in the blanks!