It looked like Joel Ben Izzy had escaped the conventional workforce forever when he chose a career as a professional storyteller. But that wasn't the final chapter.
Ben Izzy first bolted off the track in 1979, quitting Stanford after sophomore year. In a farewell Daily column, he explained that it was time to live life instead of study it. His decision so impressed then-freshman Tyler Bridges, '82, that 19 years later Bridges tracked down the dropout just to find out what had happened next. In "What I Learned from Joel" (November/December, 1998), Bridges reported that Ben Izzy returned to finish his Stanford degree in 1982, then became a "traveling storyteller" -- with 5,000 performances worldwide and several CDs to his credit. He was faring nicely outside the 9-to-5 mainstream, thank you.
So what was the former rebel doing on campus in December headed for the Law School? And why is his byline turning up in publications like Trial and The Recorder? It turns out he's found a new market for storytelling in the legal profession. The yarn-spinner isn't offering entertainment; he's counseling the counselors on how to put their cases across to a judge or jury in the most compelling way possible. "When you think about it," he says, "storytelling is an important part of what goes on in a courtroom." The idea of lawyers as clients first struck Ben Izzy while he was on jury duty. He observed that they were all essentially telling stories -- but, he chuckles, "unfortunately, no one had taught them how!"
Now, Ben Izzy divides his time between coaching attorneys and entertaining 8-year-olds. He and fellow storyteller Ruth Halpern have started a Berkeley company called Anecdotal Evidence. They run workshops, write articles, teach courses accredited by the state bar and advise on cases. A book and a website are in the works.
The storyteller's counsel runs from finding effective imagery in the driest contract dispute to choosing effective metaphors. The prosecution's "mountain of evidence" in the O.J. Simpson case backfired, he says, when the mountain became too steep a climb, and the jurors "threw down their pitons." Ben Izzy tries to help his clients plant their flag on the summit.
