University of St. Thomas Law Journal

Imagination: The Lawyer’s Indispensable Tool 

Isaac Rillo*

Law is a practical profession. Lawyers deal with concrete, particular problems in the real world. Nonetheless, one might say that the lawyer’s most essential tool is abstract: their imagination.  Students who had Professor Gordon for lawyering skills will recall an adage reflecting this idea: “legal imagination is more important than legal knowledge.” The original quotation—which hung at the entrance to Professor Gordon’s high school—is from Dr. Einstein, who originally quipped “imagination is more important than knowledge.”1 As one might guess, this blog unpacks the “Gordon corollary”2 of the Einsteinian aphorism by exploring and reflecting upon the imagination’s indispensable role in lawyering. 

What is the Imagination in a Legal Context? 

To begin, Professor Gordon defined what imagination is in the land of law. For a lawyer, the imagination is “the ability to see what isn’t yet visible, to perceive legal possibilities that don’t yet exist.”3 What’s more, the imaginative exercise is not a vague idea; it is deeply personal and relational. When a lawyer uses their imagination, they think about “not only how [they] see the world but how [they] see [their] own work in the world.”4 In this way, the lawyer engages in a meta-analysis of their role and how it figures into broader society. 

The imaginative act does not just apply to grand aspirations, though. It also pervades quotidian aspects of the lawyering.5 For example, the imagination is crucial to a lawyer’s empathy, to “put themselves in their client’s shoes” and to take on their values and sense of costs and risks. Therefore, the “[imagination] is not about fantasy or wishful thinking, it is about envisioning how a rule can apply to a new situation, how a precedent can be re-interpreted, and how a client’s position can be re-framed.”6 Here, the imagination is not floating away aimlessly like a lost balloon, it is tied to concrete problem solving. “At its best, legal imagination is a disciplined form of creativity, tethered to legal materials but not limited by them.” 

What is the Role of Imagination in the Lawyer and How Does it Shape the Profession? 

The imagination is essential to all forms of legal practice—litigation and transactional law.7 In litigation, it “helps the lawyer form a compelling theory of the case, analogize to existing cases, and anticipate counterarguments.”8 Dealing with the law “as it is” is just the beginning because “great litigators don’t just apply the law, they imagine how it can be stretched or reinterpreted to serve their client’s cause.”9 Some of Professor Gordon’s most cherished exemplars include Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Thurgood Marshall, and Louis Brandeis—not as Justices—but as lawyers creatively advocating for their clients.10  

According to Professor Gordon, transactional lawyers need imaginative powers equal to a litigator’s. In transactional settings, lawyers anticipate risks by imagining hypothetical consequences. This is because transactional law is inherently preventative rather than remedial; indeed, transactional lawyers exist to “solve problems that haven’t even happened yet.”11 Although certain types of hypothetical problems are common, as evidenced by boilerplate contract clauses and compliance frameworks, the transactional lawyer must continually reimagine new ways to mitigate client’s risks in a constantly evolving legal landscape. 

Professor Gordon also reflected on how the lawyer-client relationship draws out the challenges and limits of the imagination. Again, the lawyer must imagine what it might be like in the client’s shoes. What are their values and objectives? How do they see the risks and rewards? Here, however, the lawyer confronts an existential problem: They aren’t the client, no matter how hard they might try to imagine it. So, when the client asks, “What would you do if you were me?”12 the lawyer must recognize their own limitations and recall that the lawyers is not the client and cannot be the client. In fact, Professor Gordon suggests, telling a client “This is what you should do because this is what I would do” runs the subtle risk of the lawyer substituting their own values for the client’s.13 The appropriate question to the client is, “What would you do if you were you?” Thus, even though the lawyer can’t really put themselves in the client’s position, they can apply their imagination to empathize with the client by “connecting them with who they are and what’s motivating them.” One remarkable thing is that “lawyers can have those conversations and they can involve people’s faith; they can involve people’s central ethical characters.”14

What is your Favorite Example of a Lawyer’s Imagination Changing History? 

For Professor Gordon, the partnership between Charles Hamilton Houston and Thurgood Marshall is an outstanding testament to the imagination’s power.15 In brief, “[Marshall and Houston] didn’t just challenge segregation, they designed a long-term litigation strategy, case by case, that ultimately culminated in Brown v. Board of Education.”16 This monumental task “took enormous imagination—immense imagination—to see how equal protection arguments . . . in different contexts could lay the groundwork for dismantling Jim Crow.”17 Marshall and Houston did not just devise an ingenious legal strategy, they forged their imaginations to an unwavering sense of fortitude. Although technical imagination was critical, the courage to pursue what could be was the underlying impetus for their pursuit of justice. 

How is Imagination Not Just a Fuzzy Word that Dreamers and Denizens of La-La Land Use?  How do We Anchor Our Imaginations in a Pragmatic Way to Benefit the Common Good? 

Professor Gordon answers these questions by drawing attention to the lawyer’s fundamental tension. He says, “the lawyer’s great balancing act is to dream boldly and argue rigorously.”18 This idea has been alluded to above—the lawyer must “take their imagination and channel it through discipline, it must be grounded in precedent and evidence and institutions, and what anchors it is a sense of responsibility for the clients, to the court, and to the rule of law.”19 Moreover, “a practical imagination does not ignore constraints, it engages with them.”20 For example, a lot of students initially “find IRAC [Issue, Rule, Analysis, and Conclusion] stifling.”21 The repetitive, formulaic structure circumscribes creativity and disrupts a writer’s natural flow. However, “real creative types know that you can take a [structure] and use it [to one’s advantage].”22 The form of the sonnet didn’t hamper Shakespeare, it provided him structure to channel his creative genius.23 

Service to the client and the common good keeps the imagination in check. “When it’s guided by ethical purpose and legal craft, imagination isn’t self-indulgence, the imagination becomes a tool for service.”24 It is imperative that a lawyer remembers that “the professional is a servant; rank does not confer privilege or give power, it imposes responsibility.”25 As long as the lawyer maintains this fundamental posture—of service and authentic humility—the imagination is protected from self-aggrandizement and orients the lawyer to serve the common good. 

How Can Lawyers Expand their Imaginative Capacity? 

Lawyers can—and must—nourish their imagination. Reading fiction is “one way to do this, it teaches empathy and perspective shifting . . . such skills are invaluable in any form of advocacy or negotiation.”26 The fine arts offer similar imaginative sustenance because they “cultivate intuition and metaphor but also structure.”27 Examples abound in poetry, literature, visual art, and music. Finally, immersing oneself in other cultures “expands your sense of what’s possible in human arrangements and values.”28 Above all, “lawyers need to remain curious.”29 They need to ask questions about why and what if. . . every legal system evolves and somebody has to imagine the next step.”30 Why not you? 

* Isaac Rillo, JD Candidate, University of St. Thomas School of Law Class of 2026 (Associate Editor). 

  1. Zoom Interview with Mitchell Gordon, Full-Time Professor of L., Univ. of St. Thomas Sch. of L. (Apr. 9, 2025) (on file with author).  ↩︎
  2. Id. ↩︎
  3. Id. ↩︎
  4. Id. ↩︎
  5. Id. ↩︎
  6. Id. ↩︎
  7. Id. ↩︎
  8. Id. ↩︎
  9. Id. ↩︎
  10. See id. ↩︎
  11. Id. ↩︎
  12. Id. ↩︎
  13. Id. ↩︎
  14. Id; See also Model Rules of Pro. Conduct r. 2.1 (Am. Bar. Ass’n 1983) (Stating “[i]n representing a client, a lawyer shall exercise independent professional judgment and render candid advice. In rendering advice, a lawyer may refer not only to law but to other considerations such as moral, economic, social and political factors, that may be relevant to the client’s situation.”). ↩︎
  15. Id. ↩︎
  16. Id; See Brown v. Board of Ed. of Topeka, Shawnee County, Kan., 347 US 483 (1954). ↩︎
  17. Zoom Interview with Mitchell Gordon, Full-Time Professor of L., Univ. of St. Thomas Sch. of L. (Apr. 9, 2025) (on file with author). ↩︎
  18. Id. ↩︎
  19. Id. ↩︎
  20. Id. ↩︎
  21. Id. ↩︎
  22. Id. ↩︎
  23. See id. ↩︎
  24. Id. ↩︎
  25. Id. ↩︎
  26. Id. See also Luke 12:48 (Revised Standard Version) (“Every one to whom much is given, of him will much be required; and of him to whom men commit much they will demand the more.”); Spider-Man (Columbia Pictures 2002) (“With great power comes great responsibility”). ↩︎
  27. Id. ↩︎
  28. Id. ↩︎
  29. Id. ↩︎
  30. Id. ↩︎

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