The microformation of criminal defence: on the lawyer's notes, speech production, and the field of presence

Abstract

In the following discourse analysis, I crisscross the realms of text and talk to follow the microformation of legal discourse. How, I ask, does a barrister put together the case for a Crown Court hearing? This representational project, I argue, involves assorted artefacts (marks, modules, maps, or lists) that are consulted as resources on succeeding stages. The various sites of the microformation are the brief, the barrister's note book, and some confidential and staged speech events. The offered trans-sequential analysis of legal discourse puts into perspective preparation and performance, file work and speech production, procedural history, and the field of presence. I explore, above all, the unknown region in between judicial talk and textuality. In this way, in the article, I account for the complexity, contingency, and craft of criminal defense.