Justification: one metaphor among many?

I've often been one of those people trotting out that phrase of the moment in criticism of some exegesis that it is 'importing law court language' into passages where it doesn't belong. Behind that oft heard criticism of exegesis of individual passages and peoples theology in general is the assumption that the law court (justification, righteous, acquittal etc) is just one metaphor among many for describing our relationship with God. I have had that challenged recently in reading Oswald Bayer. He argues in short that the law court is just a heightened and formalised version of something that is all encompassing:

We cannot reject the question that others put to us: Why have you done this? What were you talking about? Might you not have done something else? In the other's view of us, and also in our own view we always find ourselves to be the ones who are already being questioned and who have to answer [...] We are forced to justify ourselves, and as we do so, we usually want to be right. Before the court of law, what constitutes our whole life is disclosed with particular clarity. The world of the court is not a special world of its own, but just a particular instance - a very striking one - of what is being done always and everywhere.

(p.1, Living by Faith: Justification and Sanctification (Lutheran Quarterly Books) by Oswald Bayer, translated by Geoffrey W. Bromiley)