White claims that, in learning law, it is imperative that students first identify their own ethos to become effective practitioners.
These characteristics mean that legal language is always subject to the interpretation of the reader, thus creating a rhetorical situation.
Using Gibbon's History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire as an example, he illustrates how the form, syntax, and presentation of any writing necessarily shape the way a reader receives the facts.
He seeks to answer that question through an examination of the purpose of criminal law, which he concludes to be placing blame.
He argues that today's attorneys are a modern-day version of Plato's "Gorgias" and concludes with the importance of maintaining ethics in the practice of law.
Weisburg argues that White relies on law too much as a function of pure rhetoric, and that he ignores the scientific aspect of the discipline.
She criticizes his work for its lack of explaining how the rhetoric of law is applied to different genders, races, and classes in different ways.