A Kinder, Gentler Divorce...or a Stronger, Healthier Marriage

Today I changed my intake sheet. I just had to do it. My practice is constantly evolving. I learn so much from my clients. I realized that some of them as a couple really didn't want this divorce, they just didn't know that they had any options. Maybe they went to couples therapy and they felt it didn't work. Sometimes they come in for a divorce, and decide that what they really want is coaching for a better marriage. This just reinforces my belief that we need to remain flexible and be creative about our ideas about who we are and what we do. We need to keep checking in with ourselves to make sure we are truly doing the life's work we think we are doing.  A little over a decade ago, I went through training at an online "university" called Coach University to be trained as a life coach.  I truly loved coaching and I found myself applying coaching concepts to my personal and professional life daily. But somehow the business of being a lawyer took over my identity. Eventually I was able to break away and identify myself as a mediator and self-proclaimed "Peacemaking Lawyer." Finally, I have decided to fully embrace the fact that I AM A COACH and it is like coming home. For a little while now, I've been calling myself a "Divorce Coach" which makes sense because the work that I do, either as a mediator or as a peacemaking lawyer, is focused on getting my clients to a better, happier and healthier place. But now I realize that I can add even more value for those clients who aren't sure if divorce is right for them. They are just stressed out and think that divorce is the only answer. Many times it is. But, sometimes it's not. Don't get me wrong, I am not a therapist. What I am is a person who believes in the positive and empowering people to do what is truly right for them. I am really good at motivating and inspiring people and helping them see the possibilities where they thought that all was lost. So here it is, people, although being a Certified Family Mediator and Peacemaking Lawyer is a lot of fun, I now have room in my practice for people who want to explore the possibility of staying together. Maybe they will, and maybe they won't, but at least through marriage and life coaching, we can help them--if they both want--to get to a place of clarity, healing their grief and improving themselves and their relationship, even if that relationship is going to be a post-divorce one. So, I am proud to say I am now a Divorce, Marriage and Life Coach. My intake sheet now has a box under Mediation/Divorce Coaching (and before the boxes for Collaborative Divorce and Uncontested Divorce) of Marriage Coaching. I have also added a "Divorce Readiness" Section to my intake sheet for both husband and wife so that I can find out from each spouse on a scale of 1 to 10--with 1 being "I don't want this divorce at all" and 10 being "I am absolutely positive that divorce is the answer"--how much they each are ready to proceed with "A Kinder, Gentler Divorce."  For those times that both spouses circle low numbers, we can discuss the option of Marriage Coaching, putting the divorce mediation/divorce coaching on the back burner and working--at least for a short period--towards "A Stronger, Healthier Marriage." If it doesn't work out, we can always go back to the Marital Settlement Agreement and Parenting Plan later. And if divorce does happen...we still have a kinder, gentler way.  I want to thank my clients for always inspiring me. They and their needs are the ones that determine my practice. With each couple I work with my practice gets better and richer. I love what I do and I love my clients!

BROOKE DERATANY GOLDFARB
Harvard Law, JD
Divorce, Marriage & Life Coach
Certified Family Mediator
Peacemaking Lawyer
http://www.peacefulbeachmediation.com/

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