When the Department of Justice released its more than 70-page lawsuit against Apple, its narrative read more like a docudrama than a stodgy legal document. It dropped the reader right into a 2010 exchange between an Apple executive and then-CEO Steve Jobs, who were just beginning to recognize how easy it was for customers to switch to their rivals’ products — unless they did something to stop it. This kind of writing, sometimes called a speaking complaint, is a far cry from the rote retelling you often find in lawsuits.
That’s not a surprise once you know that Hetal Doshi, lead of the nascent litigation program within the Antitrust Division, sees her job, in part, as that of a storyteller.
“Storytelling matters a lot in litigation,...