Bringing Love to Law

A review of Lawyers as Peacemakers: Practicing Holistic, Problem-Solving Law (Wright, J. Kim, ABA Publishing 2010)

I found J. Kim Wright (lawyer and author) the way people find people these days, by Googling something I was interested in—combining healing and positive psychology with law—and coming across her website (www.cuttingedgelaw.com), which I mentioned in a prior article entitled, “The Lawyer as Healer.”

When I wrote that article, I was afraid I was really going out on a limb. I thought healing and the law such a novel and avant-guarde concept. After all, as soon as you enter law school, you are expected to become a great warrior: a shark or a pit bull whose only job is to get out there and fight. I was certain that my desire to practice a more peace-loving and humanistic kind of law would be ridiculed and marginalized. Maybe I had just chosen the wrong profession.

Then again, maybe not.

According to Ms. Wright, there is a rapidly expanding like-minded legal community out there, actively practicing the concepts of peacemaking, problem-solving and conflict-healing. Ms. Wright has been instrumental in telling these lawyers’ stories and bringing them together. Over a dozen years of her findings are culminated in her new ABA publication, Lawyers as Peacemakers: Practicing Holistic, Problem-Solving Law.

After having carefully reviewed Lawyers as Peacemakers, my recommendation is that it be required law school reading. I encourage judges and lawyers in leadership to develop continuing legal education programs based on this book. Doing so would make great strides towards more congenial and practical legal communities. Perhaps more persuasively, in this age of increasing budget cutbacks, the implementation of programs and practices discussed in this book would promote more efficient and effective court systems.

Lawyers as Peacemakers is an accessible book, broken down into easy to digest chapters for the professional on the go. It is not some dry scholarly tome, but rather a refreshing and practical guide to how to be a happier lawyer and have happier clients. It summarizes for the general legal population and its clients where the profession is heading and how practicing mindful, people-focused law is more mainstream than everybody thought.

Ms. Wright was asked to write this book by the largest legal organization in the United States, but she also wanted to explain in plain English to regular people who happened to go to law school how they can have a more fulfilling, balanced and meaningful professional life while reclaiming their true selves and their souls from a broken, inhospitable and de-humanizing legal system. She wants lawyers to take the lead, think outside the box and be an active part of finding and implementing solutions rather than just identifying problems.

In Lawyers as Peacemakers, Ms. Wright highlights some fascinating innovations in the law, such as collaborative and cooperative law, creative problem solving, holistic justice, preventative law, restorative justice, transformative mediation and therapeutic jurisprudence. She also gives readers concrete steps to transform their lives and legal practices through simple common-sense strategies.

Although she expected this resource and reference book to be controversial and alienating to the legal establishment, there is obviously a great thirst for the knowledge and wisdom that Ms. Wright seeks to impart. So many preordered their copy of Lawyers as Peacemakers from the ABA Publication website before it was even available, it became a bestseller before it was actually released and remains at the top of the ABA Publications’ Bestseller List.

Ms. Wright is obviously on to something. She recognizes that most lawyers went to law school in the first place to make a difference in the world. Lawyers as Peacemakers is about a movement—a paradigm shift—whereby thousands of legal practitioners dare to say that they are bringing love and humanity to the practice of law. By doing so, they will get better results and satisfaction for themselves, for their clients and for society as a whole.

The Lawyer as Healer

“Doctors…still retain a high degree of public confidence because they are perceived as healers. Should lawyers not be healers? Healers, not warriors? Healers, not procurers? Healers, not hired guns?”

--Warren Burger, Chief Justice, U.S. Supreme Court (1969-1986)

Lawyers were originally intended to be healers of societal rifts, not zealous courtroom adversaries. We as lawyers should bear this in mind as we conduct our legal practice, regardless of what our area of focus may be. However, in no aspect of the law is such consideration arguably more appropriate than in that of divorce and family law.

Perhaps it is ironic that Warren Earl Burger, the longest serving Chief Justice of the highest court in the land, was a critic of litigiousness. Burger, alarmed by what he perceived as abuse of the court system by attorneys and their clients, was one of the original proponents of Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR)—i.e., mediation, negotiation, arbitration, collaboration, cooperation—in its ability to unburden a overloaded justice system.

In addressing the American Bar Association in 1984, Justice Burger declared, “Our system is too costly, too painful, too destructive, too inefficient for a truly civilized people. To rely on the adversary process as the principal means of resolving conflicting claims is a mistake that must be corrected.”

The Honorable Chief Justice’s concept of the lawyer as healer of human conflicts was not a new one. It is said the first lawyers were not zealous adversaries, but rather peacemakers and advocates for civil order. According to Michigan lawyer, John W. Allen, in his October 2001 Michigan Bar Journal article, lawyers have historically been responsible for preventing battle and peaceably resolving disputes. He notes that in the early 12^th century, Henry II systemized earlier experiments of his grandfather, Henry I, by sending his “Court” of traveling justices on regular circuits through his realm in order to substitute the peaceful resolution of disputes for the traditional method of “trial by battle.” The advocates who emerged to represent those appearing at the local court were intended to resolve disputes and not fan them.

Such origin of the lawyer is echoed in Steven Keeva’s 1999 ABA publication, Transforming Practices: Finding Joy and Satisfaction in the Legal Life, where, according to Chicago attorney turned Notre Dame Law School Dean, turned Catholic Priest, David T. Link, the first lawyers actually appeared back when hunters and gatherers started settling in villages. When disputes would arise over, for example, property rights, the oldest and wisest members of the community were called upon to make decisions regarding the disputes. Soon, others in the community began acting as representatives of the disputants, but such representatives were trying to bring peace back to the community, rather than act as adversaries.

Somewhere along the line, lawyers as a group began straying from their original duty. Reverend Link was honored with the American Inns of Court’s 2009 Professionalism Award for the Seventh Circuit at the Seventh Circuit Judicial Conference in Indianapolis for his life-long demonstration of character and integrity in the legal profession. In receiving this award, Reverend Link commented:

“The ultimate goal of a lawyer is not to “win” but to achieve justice and healing. Just as a doctor can treat or cure a patient without bringing about healing, so, too, can a lawyer win a lawsuit without healing his or her client. And just as a patient can be healed by a doctor even though his or her disease remains uncured, so, too, can the client of a lawyer be healed even if the client’s problem can’t be cured.”

Now more than ever, it is time for lawyers to reclaim their original roles as peacemakers, healers and problem-solvers. For more information on how to have a more mindful, helpful and satisfying law practice, visit www.CuttingEdgeLaw.com, www.innsofcourt.org and www.healingandthelaw.org

This is My Village--Why One Lawyer Refuses to Litigate Divorces

The Divorce Coach’s Corner: This is My Village--Why One Lawyer Refuses to Litigate Divorces

As you may have heard, there is a centuries-old proverb, common among various African cultures, and made famous by former First Lady, Hillary Clinton in 1996 that, "It takes a village to raise a child." Regardless of your political affiliation and no matter how you may feel about the Clintons, I think there is a little something to be said for being mindful that everything we do and say in our lives has the potential to affect those around us. I personally choose to internalize this saying in my divorce practice.

Not that I’m literally going to baby sit my clients’ children or help pay for their college education—that is not the point. In fact, chances are that in my role as a mediator and family lawyer, I’m never actually even going to meet my clients’ children. Regardless, in working with divorcing couples, it doesn’t make me any less responsible for thinking about how my actions will impact the family and the children of that family—be they minor children residing at home or adult children with their own lives.

The way I choose to interpret this saying is simple: My community is my village. I live in this village. The children in this village go to school with and interact with my children. I am a mother, a wife, a daughter and yes, a member of this village, before I am a lawyer or a mediator. What happens here concerns me. The more healthy, happy, well-adjusted people there are in my community, the more prosperous my community will be. I have the power to either make it a better place or not. By encouraging couples to avoid litigating their divorce and find a more peaceful way to get on with their lives; by focusing them on the future and the well-being of their children, rather than encouraging one of them to “fight, fight, fight;” by reminding them that even if they are no longer “Husband” and “Wife,” they are still “Mom” and “Dad” and both needed dearly; I am looking out for the children in my village. I never want to have to walk through the halls of my children’s school and have to avert my eyes or feel uncomfortable because there is a parent there who feels I tried to help his or her spouse “take their kids away.”

I’m not saying there aren’t certain dire circumstances that might require the intervention of the court—such as in cases with domestic violence, extreme personality disorders or criminal activity. I would like, however, for more divorce professionals to think of the judicial system in divorce cases as the Emergency Room of a hospital. There are plenty of attorneys in our community who are very capable at handling such “Emergency Room Divorces.” However, I submit that for most cases, the filing of contested petitions and counter petitions and turning dissolution of marriage actions into a war or battleground only serves to destroy families. I personally cannot bring myself to participate in the destruction that comes with litigation, even if the litigation is warranted. This is why I have chosen to only handle divorces and other family matters either as a mediator, a collaborative lawyer, or a lawyer in cooperative or uncontested cases. If it goes to litigation, I immediately refer it out to another lawyer.

Most people most of the time are fully capable of doing the right thing, being good parents and discussing how to dissolve their marriage and resolve any differences in a civilized, private and healthy way. It is my honor to assist such people get on with their lives with as little psychological damage as possible. After all, these couples and families live in my community. This community is my village. Their children are my children—or at the very least are like my children—and although it might sound trite, it is absolutely true that all of our children are the future of our community, maybe even our nation or our world.

I believe we all have the responsibility to look out for the good of our community. We can do that by living our lives and conducting ourselves in our professions in a way that does as little harm as possible to others. As divorce professionals, we can start by encouraging people to get along and reminding them that their children will always need both of them. We can help them talk out their differences and move on with their lives. We can support them as they endeavor to do what is right both for themselves and their children.

After all, this is my village. My children live here.