Kenneth W. Davis, at Manage Your Writing, reports on the findings of Robert B. Cialdina, a psychologist who devoted 30 years of research into why people comply with requests. The product of his research is the identification of six human tendencies that foster or lead to compliance with a request, or perhaps agreement with an argument or position. The list includes: (1) reciprocation; (2) consistency; (3) social validation; (4) liking; (5) authority; and, (6) scarcity. Davis goes into more detail in his post regarding these tendencies and I suggest you hit the jump. But to bring distill them into one scenario: you are most likely to get what you are after for if you offer a quid pro quo of a scarce resource to a group of people who have already helped you out in the past and who like you and respect you as an authority figure. Try to pack all that into your next Brief or Motion.