Revisioning Law - With Heart
Gail Bernice Holland with Pat Sullivan & Dolly M. Garlo | IONS Noetic Sciences Review | IONS Review #62 |(2 ratings)A Legal Movement
Kim Wright, a lawyer, is ready to present her case to anyone who will listen. On the website she helped create at www.renaissancelawyer.com, you'll find this statement: "There is a movement in the law toward a more visionary, humanistic approach. . . . Lawyers all over the world are hearing the call, and many are beginning to explore new options for practicing law and serving their communities."
How does Wright know such a movement is occurring? Not only did she change her own way of handling legal cases, but Wright (who is also a coach for lawyers) has contacted hundreds of individuals in the legal profession who claim that they, too, are now pursuing innovative ways to resolve conflicts. She helped form the nonprofit Renaissance Lawyer, a society that encourages lawyers and like-minded individuals to connect with and support each other. The Renaissance Lawyer website provides information for anyone seeking new legal options.
The movement is driven, she says, by people who feel that the confrontational "win at all costs" approach in our present legal system is causing more harm than good. She cites her own experience with practicing law from the stance of blame: "I used to work almost exclusively in family law, handling custody cases. We called them 'custody battles'; it's interesting that those two words are usually used together. I actually went to battle in my very first custody trial and won. It was like being a gladiator, but there were real people's lives at stake. Even though we 'won,' it was awful for my client and for the family. I felt the litigation model didn't work in that situation, and I began to investigate ways that law could be more of a peacemaking profession.
"This perspective," Wright continues, "changed me on a personal and professional level. I started talking to other lawyers about their dissatisfaction with the legal system, and how they were creating or finding new approaches. They often think they are alone, but they are beginning to realize that this movement is growing. It seems as if a paradigm shift is occurring. I see lawyers in a position to be agents for transforming individuals and our society. My heroes are some of the civil-rights attorneys who changed society by changing the law. When people come to us lawyers, we have a lot of power to help them resolve conflict, to encourage them to see what's really going on, and to learn the lessons that are there to be learned."
Mediation has been used for many years, notes Wright, and when this process seeks transformative, lasting, and healing resolutions, the results can be powerful and cost-effective. For instance, Wright points to a specific case against The Toro Company, a manufacturer of outdoor maintenance equipment. A family filed a wrongful-death suit against Toro, claiming a faulty design because their seventeen-year-old son was killed when a Toro sit-down mower toppled over an embankment and rolled on top of him.
Toro, says Wright, addressed this problem by immediately expressing their sympathy and concern to the family. This was a company, she observes, that had hired a mediation counsel, and had developed a multilevel process for addressing conflict. Moreover, in addition to offering a monetary settlement, Toro exhibited a willingness to try to prevent future accidents—an offer that, to this family, was just as important as money.
Resources
Coaches [www.lawyercoaches.com] are increasingly used by lawyers to transform their practices.Collaborative Law [www.collabgroup.com] offers information about collaborative law, and referrals to collaborative lawyers. The collaborative model is primarily used to resolve conflict in divorces.
Community-oriented Lawyering [www.communitylawyering.org] works to find community solutions for repetitious issues.
Drug Treatment Courts [www.american.edu/justice/drugcourts.html] is a resource focused on using the court system to support drug recovery programs.
Holistic Law [www.iahl.org] focuses on looking at the whole picture—the lawyer's role, the client's responsibility, and the impact on the community.
Peacemaking [www.commonway.org] is for lawyers who wish to settle disputes.
Preventive Law [www.cwsl.edu] is an approach to law where the parties and their attorneys are proactive in limiting their exposure to litigation.
Restorative Justice [www.restorativejustice.org] is the site for the International Centre for Justice and Reconciliation, and includes information and referrals.
Renaissance Lawyer [www.renaissancelawyer.com] serves as a clearinghouse; the website includes an overview of nearly twenty different approaches, models, and resources for lawyers.
The Center for Contemplative Mind in Society [www.contemplativemind.org/programs/law] has a program on meditation for lawyers.
Therapeutic Jurisprudence [www.therapeuticjurisprudence.org] looks at the therapeutic impact of the judicial system. TJ practitioners focus on the healing potential of the legal system.
Transformative Mediation [www.transformativemediation.org, www.mediationinlaw.org, and www.crtraining.com] is another alternative approach to law.
Transforming Practices [www.transformingpractices.com] has anecdotes and writings by and about lawyers approaching the legal system from a spiritual, fulfilling perspective.
This type of early-settlement program, stresses Wright, also makes sense from a practical, financial perspective. Toro's settlement program, introduced several years ago, has produced these positive results: ninety-five percent of claims have been settled, and the duration of a case has decreased from more than a year to a matter of months.
In other legal cases where "collaborative law" or "restorative justice" options are used, claim costs and the number of court cases are also lowered. The Wall Street Journal recently reported that "collaborative law" is now going mainstream, with nearly 3,000 lawyers in twenty-five states offering this option in divorces. When the collaborative method is applied, says Wright, the parties and their lawyers work towards a settlement from the outset. They actually sign a contract agreeing not to litigate. They share information openly, and work for creative solutions. If they can't settle their conflict, both lawyers are required to withdraw from the case.
For criminal cases, the restorative-justice option is gaining popularity. As Wright explains on the website: "A tool of restorative justice is the conference where the victim, the offender, family members, and others come together in a face-to-face meeting, and through communication work toward a mutually satisfactory solution."
This method, adds Wright, can be a healing process for all participants. The offender takes responsibility and apologizes, and often the victim is able to forgive and move on.
Wright readily admits that litigation is still a useful and important option. However, in the litigation model, she says, the focus is on winning, defeating the other side, and this often polarizes people. "Alternative legal options bring people together to seek win/win solutions. The lawyer has more tools for resolving the conflict in ways that are satisfying for everyone."
But when litigation is necessary, says Wright, lawyers can choose to approach the conflict in a manner that fosters dignity, authenticity, and respect. "Many lawyers who are involved in litigation are now attempting to bring their own values, ethics, and principles to litigation, and to act as peacemakers. The legal profession is undergoing an expansion of what is possible."
She is not surprised by these attempts to transform the practice of law. Individuals in our society, she says, are yearning to live in a more cooperative, compassionate way, to have purpose and meaning in their lives. "How we resolve our personal conflicts has an impact on our quality of life. Spiritual books in our society are bestsellers, and people are looking at how to live purposefully. Lawyers are impacted by these developments. It was just a matter of time before we said: 'How do we apply this to the law?'"
Contact information for Kim Wright: jkimwright@renaissancelawyer.com
Visionary Law
Pat Sullivan
Never has the world more needed a wise and healthy legal system to create healthy, peaceful, and just communities. Yet law has long been vastly undervalued, and many lawyers are leaving the profession. One reason: They—like the general public—rarely hear about the best ways to practice for the benefit of self, clients, and society.
When I first worked as a part-time legal secretary and paralegal in 1976, I considered lawyers the epitome of unconscious, uncreative people. Twenty years, and five hundred lawyer bosses later, I have accumulated a rare inside view of the pain and frustration that make so many lawyers and clients unhappy with the practice of law. However, I also saw what worked and what didn't within the legal profession, and discovered its rarely reported creative soul.
Behind closed doors with a trusted listener, most attorneys will admit they long to serve as meaningfully as did the fictional Atticus Finch in Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird. When highly skilled lawyers discover how to reclaim the creative and spiritual gifts that may have been quashed in law school, they become effective, conscious, and innovative leaders.
The problem is that lawyers have few opportunities to talk to each other about how to work creatively and consciously. Thus, they don't get the tips and inspiration to work as effectively as they could. Nor do the rest of us hear much about the law's inherent potential for goodness. That's why features such as "Transforming the Legal Profession," published in the Institute of Noetic Sciences' Connections magazine (January 1999), are so important.
"Many of us ache for the opportunity to use our minds and our training in a manner consistent with our growing knowledge of the interconnectedness of all life," wrote attorney Faye Weisler of Ashland, Oregon, in response to the Connections article.
From a personal point of view, working for lawyers forced me to ground my creativity and spirituality in everyday reality. To stay efficient in a high-pressure atmosphere, I had to draw on spiritual practices. By being attentive to details, whether or not I cared about a case, I learned how to practice mindfulness, compassionate nonattachment, and receptivity to wisdom in the moment. I finally realized that my work with lawyers was an integral way to support my creative, spiritual life.
I formed a spirituality and law group in 1998, became part of a visioning process for the Law Practice Management section of the American Bar Association in February 2000, and a board member of the Renaissance Lawyer Society in June 2001. All these opportunities helped me understand lawyers, their values and vision.
Traditional legal education tends to repress a type of consciousness, which the assistant managing editor of the American Bar Association (ABA) Journal, Steven Keeva, defines as "the scope of one's awareness of different realms in which we live. Lawyers can confuse the necessary tool for their work—reductionist thinking—with all of reality. The end result is treating clients, other lawyers, family, and self as much less than who they really are."
Yet significant conscious innovation has occurred within the ABA's Law Practice Management section and the ABA Journal. During the eleven years that Keeva has written for the ABA Journal, he has heard the pains and dreams of lawyers. At the 1998 ABA convention, he launched "Transforming Practices: Finding Joy and Satisfaction in the Legal Life," which reported how many lawyers are transforming their work through yoga, Buddhist mindfulness meditation, and Christian contemplative teachings. This book is supplemented by a website (www.transformingpractices.com) that has become an oasis for conscious and creative lawyers.
Keeva regularly speaks to lawyers around the country, including those attending a recent symposium on mindfulness at Harvard Law School. "Meditation is getting into law school classes now, and many lawyers see it as a valuable tool for accessing another level of understanding," says Keeva. "Mindfulness strikes a big chord among lawyers because it is nondenominational, and because it opens up increased awareness of the present experience."
To those who question the relevance of meditation or contemplative practices to law, Keeva replies, "People come to lawyers in need. Clients see lawyers on some level as a member of a priesthood, someone who will care for them. No one thinks it strange if a minister or rabbi or mullah goes into silence or takes a retreat to wrestle with a particular issue. Why doesn't it also make sense for lawyers to make deep, quiet reflection part of their lives if that is what it takes for them to be there for others?"
Attorney Stewart Levine has also made consciousness and creativity the hallmark of his work. He writes in his new work, The Book of Agreement: 10 Essential Elements for Getting the Results You Want, "I quickly realized that most people do not know how to generate a collaborative agreement. Instead, we have become stuck in a competitive model that says 'it's me or them,' 'not me and them'."
The result, he adds, is that contracts are too often based on fear of the other person rather than on a partnership designed to create the results desired in a shared vision. Levine has developed a model that begins with naming the intentions and hopes of the parties, as well as their concerns and fears. Both sides define the promises they make to each other and how they will measure their satisfaction with the agreements. They renegotiate until they have a mutually satisfying covenant.
If lawyers want to help craft agreements for results, they have to move beyond the traditional adversarial orientation, which Levine defines as "How can I win by protecting my client more than you protect your client?" Instead, lawyers need to come to the table with the perspective of "How can everyone get the results they desire from our collaboration?"
It is my hope that it will not be long before the value of law and lawyers is celebrated throughout the land. Perhaps in saying "thank you for the gifts of human law," we will value it more, which means we will not allow anyone to erode or malign our precious legal system. Perhaps there could even be a flowering of new conscious legal creativity to equal, even surpass, the legal brilliance on which this nation was founded.
Pat Sullivan is president of Visionary Resources in Oakland, California. For more details, go to: www.visionary-resources.com or call 510-530-0284.
Law as a Healing Tool
Dolly M. Garlo
I am not alone!, was my response to reading "Transforming the Legal Profession" in Connections. Since that time, the information age has revealed that I have never been alone. I have just been isolated from other like-minded lawyers also searching for different, effective ways to practice law and represent clients. And that revelation makes me proud to be a lawyer rather than reluctant to admit it.
In the early 1980s, I left a successful and satisfying career as an intensive-care nurse for law school. I was a healer, and thought I could become more so as a lawyer. However, I found the adversarial model of advocacy restrictive, and courses in negotiation and other communication-based forms of legal resolution were limited at that time.
I wanted to help health-care providers set up better, safer, and more efficient operations, and so I focused on administrative law and the realm of compliance standards applicable to my clients. To my surprise, I found a most contentious legal arena in which regulators and their lawyers seemed to see themselves as the police and protectors of patients—particularly to protect them from my health-care provider clients.
The law firm where I worked had good fighters, but fighting didn't seem to be the solution. In my practice, there were often differences of opinion applied to facts interpreted from different perspectives. The numerous parties involved—patients, families, health-care providers, property owners, legislators—defined the proverbial "elephant" from their view of the body part. The result was expensive, complex litigation. I felt there had to be a better way. It seemed sensible to help everyone view the whole, the part they played in it, and how to find agreeable ways to work together. Helping people find that ground—holistically preventing and minimizing legal intrusion—became my mission. It was not well understood by some legal colleagues who followed the old model: The bigger the problem, the more billable hours, the more revenue to the firm.
In 1991, I opened my own law practice devoted to teaching and empowering clients to participate in their cases, and to fashion workable cost-effective solutions, ultimately preventing legal problems whenever possible. I wanted to build long-term relationships with clients who considered me part of their operations team, not just as their hired gun. I made sure my letterhead included "counselor-at-law" as well as "attorney."
Well-meaning colleagues warned me that this approach (now called "preventive law") would not support a law practice. Yet my firm grew. Clients were attracted to our philosophy and approach.
The concept of preventive law defines three roles served by a lawyer: Designer, Problem Solver, and Fighter. Thomas D. Barton, professor of law at the California Western School of Law, and coordinator for the National Center for Preventive Law, writes: "The Designer works proactively with clients to identify potential legal trouble spots, and designs interventions that prevent those risks from occurring. The multidimensional lawyer is a Problem Solver for those problems that do erupt, notwithstanding the best preventive efforts. The Problem Solver listens actively to understand a problem in its business, relational, or organizational context, and attempts to prompt comprehensive, enduring resolution of the problem by the parties themselves. Failing that, or where justice concerns otherwise seem to warrant it, the multidimensional lawyer can become the Fighter who initiates judicial resolution of the problem."
While all three dimensions are important, the Problem Solver and Designer have been recognized only recently for their important contributions. After all, they don't supply the drama and sensational media headlines of our litigious society.
I have now chosen to become a professional certified coach for any lawyer who is interested in transforming the way he or she practices law. I also work with firms and small businesses using a concept I call the "collaborative workplace." Helping individuals and professional groups honor their unique contribution to creating harmonious productivity in the workplace may sound like a pipedream, but it stems from the belief that everyone wants to make a contribution and be acknowledged. Managing conflict and preventing problems goes a long way toward improved productivity, quality results, and personal satisfaction—true ingredients for success.
Today, I have reached the goal I originally sought: I am a healer.
Dolly Garlo works internationally with individuals and groups to create greater harmonious productivity. For more details, go to: www.allthrive.com or www.ingenuityventures.com.
Gail Bernice Holland is an associate editor of IONS Review, and former editor of Connections. She is the author of A Call for Connection: Solutions for Creating a Whole New Culture (New World Library, 1998), and can be reached at gbauthor@noetic.org.
