This paper proposes a dialogue between researchers who are intertwined by a common theme: engagement an anthropological refusal in legal anthropology research. Taking into account this mutual concern, we intend to question the general parameters that seem to constitute listening, looking and writing in the field of ethnographic legal research. To this end, João Vitor de Freitas Moreira discusses the ethnographic nuances with the Borum people, and Júlia Silva Vidal does the same debating the situation of criminalization of transvestites. The dialogues between the researches are useful to introduce cardinal points in the contemporary challenges of field research, namely: engagement as the foundation and consequence of trust in the field, and the refusal to present certain ethnographic data.