
The American legal system is structurally premised on adversarial engagement, procedural articulation, and the strategic deployment of language. Attorneys, as its principal agents, are trained to master silence not as an experiential state, but as a tactical instrument—an absence of speech deployed in service of persuasion, control, and advantage. This Article examines the paradox that emerges from this professional conditioning: the more adept attorneys become at using silence, the less capable they may be of



