International Alliance of Holistic Lawyers Article of the Month

A Journey into Grouppeace by Jill Dahlquist

Gretchen Duhaime — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 13:03:58 GMT

Jill Dahlquist is a lawyer, a minister and an energy healer. She is the creator of the Grouppeace process and does energy work for individuals and groups all over the word. See, www.Grouppeace.com. She leads guided and channeled meditation groups and is passionately exploring how we can awaken our hearts to co-create with the Divine.

When I first walked into the Inner Focus Advanced Energy Healing School in 1995, I was looking for help. Past injuries were not healing well. I often felt ungrounded and emotionally buffeted. I had tried several different therapies and had been on anti-depressants for a little while, but nothing was “fixing the problem”.

At this time, I had a small legal practice which specialized in sexual harassment and assault cases. My work was time consuming, my clients were high maintenance, and I was becoming an expert in handling women who had post-traumatic stress. I tried to listen to my clients and to help them negotiate the stresses of trying to heal while being in the middle of litigation. I effectively and aggressively settled most cases, finding common ground between employer and employee.

And yet, I couldn’t find that win/win situation for myself. Inner peace was elusive and fleeting at best.

I also was pregnant for the second time and knew, after my first pregnancy, that I was high risk. My first child had been 9 weeks premature and I was desperately trying to prevent the trauma of a second premature birth. So there I was, in 1995, making a choice to try something different, to try some of this energy healing stuff. And I found a home and a way of being for the next three and a half years. I found an awareness that revealed itself as I peeled off layer after layer of protections and defenses. And I was (and still am) discovering ways to integrate energy healing processes into my day to day life, both personal and professional.

At first, I felt like I became different people. While attending the energy healing school, it felt safe to feel and receive. I felt my heart opening. Physical and emotional pain was released. Support was received and given.

And then I would go back to what I thought was the “real” world, and having an open heart would hurt. I would yell at one of my kids to clean her room and feel nauseous. My husband and I would feel very open and then get scared and retreat from one another. I felt too emotionally vulnerable to do litigation (which irritated me greatly) and hired outside counsel to do some of the warriorlike things that needed to be done on my remaining cases.

It was an emotional roller coaster. But somewhere, deep down in my heart, I knew there was a way to integrate all of this spiritual energy healing stuff into my personal and professional life, with grace and beauty.

In 1996, I was representing a woman who had been harassed by and forced to have oral sex with her boss. She had been assaulted in many different ways and was exhibiting many signs of posttraumatic stress. I knew, in her case, that she could be subjected to some very aggressive and damaging discovery and that she was not strong enough to endure this. I called opposing counsel to begin settlement negotiations and we briefly discussed her case.

The attorney was corporate counsel and seemed to me to be somewhat naïve. He refused to believe that oral sex could be harassment. He thought that this type of sex could only be consensual because the man was so “vulnerable” to injury during the act. When I advised that oral sex was often the sex of choice in boss/subordinate harassment cases, he refused to discuss the matter, hung up the phone and stated that he would not consider any settlement—ever.

I would not accept this door slammed in my face. I sensed that even though opposing counsel could vigorously defend his client, that there was a part of him that did not want to hurt my client. There had to be some way to use this energy healing stuff to reach him.

From my own experience with energy healing, I knew that we all have energetic “essences” or higher selves, for lack of a better word, that have a consciousness far greater than that projected by our personalities. I knew how to connect into mine, I knew how to connect into the higher self of a client…and so I experimented.

I connected to my higher self. I then asked my higher self to connect with the higher self of opposing counsel and when I felt a connection, I invoked the energy of truth and began to talk. But it was not in my usual attorney-like way. As an attorney, I would often hide the vulnerabilities of my clients and reveal/emphasize only those aspects of a case which were favorable to my client. In this conversation between our higher selves, I started talking about how the discovery processes could harm my client, about how vulnerable she was at that time. I talked about what I felt about her, that I sensed she was telling the truth. I felt into and acknowledged that side of opposing counsel who really didn’t want to hurt my client. I talked about what my client needed monetarily in order to heal, to start over and to find a new life. And I could feel him listening. My higher self talked and said whatever felt right at the moment and when I was done, expressed gratitude and stopped the session.

Within a day or so of the session, I received a phone message on my answering machine from opposing counsel on this case. He asked if we could still settle the case. Very calmly and with deep reverence, I blurted out “Holy Sh…t!” and immediately proceeded to return his call. We eventually settled the case for exactly the amount of money I had asked him for—or rather, I had intuitively asked his higher self for—as a settlement just a few days earlier.

I learned a valuable lesson that day. It doesn’t matter what legal, emotional or physical barriers are placed in your way. You can always communicate with someone energetically. You can always invoke truth and healing into any situation regardless of the antics of opposing counsel, a judge or the court.

From that point on I was hooked, excited, in disbelief, and a little bit scared of our power to affect “reality”. I began to experiment with how I could apply energy healing processes to my other legal cases. I began to work at an energetic level on other cases for attorneys and litigants. Eventually, the Grouppeace process came into being.

The Grouppeace Process

Essentially, the Grouppeace process is similar to conducting a settlement conference which combines many of the wonderful conflict resolution skills that attorneys and/or therapists learn combined with a few leaps of faith and a lot of intuition. Like mediation or alternative dispute resolution methods, you bring together the parties affected and involved in the conflict. You listen to them and try to give people what they need in order to find a win/win situation.

In Grouppeace, however, you do not have to have the actual participation or even the conscious awareness of all the people involved in a conflict. Only one person needs to participate in this process. And instead of inviting and listening to all the physical “real” world parties, you invite, listen to and help heal all the energies, which intuitively appear to help resolve the conflict.

How does this work? Essentially, the Grouppeace facilitator starts the process by inviting any and all energies, which are in the highest and best interest of any group to come to a circular table. As these energies make themselves known to the facilitators and the client, the client then “charts” these energies down at the table at different positions, like the numbers on a clock. These energies can be anything that is relevant and pertinent to the client. Some examples of energies that have appeared are the higher selves of clients or opponents; the wounded parts of the client’s personality; angels; ancestors; depression; enemy patterning; drug addiction; and different representations of the client’s own family dynamics which are repeating themselves in this present conflict.

As the Grouppeace table is set, the client inevitably becomes more aware of these energies and how they have affected his/her life or the life of his/her client. With this awareness, healings begin to happen. Often, in Grouppeace sessions, clients will experience physical symptoms such as burning in the heart as certain energetic patterns held there are released. Sometimes clients will hear or receive answers to deep questions they have had about their lives. Frustrations and emotional anger can dissipate as clients see what opponents really need from them on an emotional level.

As the Grouppeace sessions resolve, some clients experience a gentle, deep sense of inner peace. Some feel great clarity as to what they want to do in the future. As the Grouppeace sessions complete, clients are often given “homework” as to how to carry the healings that they have experienced out into the world, into the courtroom, into the deposition, etc.

And what can happen after the Grouppeace session? Litigation, which had been stuck for years, can resolve. Opponents start to compromise. A judge listens to his heart and makes a very unusual ruling. A husband who had raped his wife and didn’t know whether he was going to kill her or himself, stabilizes and does not commit further violence. Witnesses, who were supposedly “victims” of a school fight, suddenly contact the criminal defense attorney (who did the Grouppeace session) and give a truthful accounting of what actually happened during the fight. This “truth” exonerates the attorney’s client and the case is resolved peacefully.

Coincidences? That is a judgement I leave totally up to the client. Sound fantastic or unreal? Sometimes.

But does Grouppeace really affect ongoing litigation? Yes, but sometimes not in ways we anticipate or push for. The art of the Grouppeace process is to let the group dynamics evolve so that whatever level of conflict is ready to be healed can move in that direction. In my experience, the effects can be subtle or dramatic depending on many factors way beyond my comprehension and control.

For more details about the Grouppeace process and for testimonials describing its effects, see my website at www.Grouppeace.com.

Underlying premises and truths in the Grouppeace process

It is important to note that the Grouppeace process is still evolving and I along with it. However, as I work through my own disbelief and questions, I have uncovered a few things about myself, about attorneys, about litigation and about energy healing which can be distilled down to a few simple “observations”. I would like to share these with you with the intention of touching your hearts and stimulating your imaginations about what is possible; about what world we can co-create.

1. Everyone can see, hear, feel, smell or otherwise experience energy.

We all affect each other energetically every moment of our lives. We have the ability to see, hear, touch, feel, smell, and otherwise sense energy: it is our birthright. But we cover up these abilities to some degree as we are born, as we grow and develop and are socialized as human beings. It is almost as if we put on different screens and doors over this gorgeous light so that we can see, discern, distinguish and—frankly—not go crazy in this world.

Watch children after they are born. Watch them grow and develop and you will see these screens develop. In particular, watch and hear the messages given to children and to your inner child about imagination, about intuition and what is real or not.

We are receiving energetic messages all the time. One of the biggest hurdles in doing Grouppeace work with yourself and others is whether you will allow yourself to listen to inner wisdom, to follow your imagination, and to trust the validity of the messages you receive.

In Grouppeace, we set safe boundaries for this to happen. And there hasn’t been one client I have had who could not—with a little coaxing—hear, see or sense some of the energies involved in their Grouppeace session. Not one.

2. We attract relationships, clients, cases and certain conflict to us, which reveal our unresolved issues.

We all attract clients, lovers, spouses, friends, business partners, and other relationships to us in order to learn certain soul lessons. It’s a question of magnetics. Certain unresolved issues in our life vibrate within us and attract others who have similar issues. Situations, which trigger these unresolved issues will appear and reappear in our lives until these triggers are resolved.

For example, a lawyer came to me and wanted a Grouppeace process. He was the executor of the estate of a famous American artist and was in the middle of some very messy international proceedings. The artist’s surviving protegees in France wanted the executor to pay certain international taxes, and when he didn’t, they accused the executor of stealing some of the artist’s paintings. A criminal investigation in France ensued and the executor was highly agitated. The other side was falsely accusing him and he was very concerned that the French proceedings would not get to the truth of the matter.

When we started the Grouppeace process, the energy of an eight-year-old boy appeared. I sensed his tremendous frustration at not being understood. My client, the executor, then revealed that he had come to this country as an immigrant when he was eight years old and had been put into public school without being able to speak any English. Many wounds of not being understood were energetically embedded into my client, wounds which were reopened in the current litigation.

As the attorney worked through some of his subconscious, early wounds of not being understood, he became more and more clear as to what he needed to do in order to prove his case. As the attorney listened to this misunderstood part of himself, he saw how this theme kept coming up in his life. As the attorney helped this inner immigrant boy heal, he became less triggered by the case he was involved in. Eventually, the case resolved and the attorney—and his inner eight-year-old immigrant—was heard and vindicated.

3. It only takes one person to heal and change a conflicted relationship.

In Grouppeace sessions, all it takes is one person in a conflicted group to radically alter the energetic structure of the whole group. Why? Because the energy of any group of people—those involved in litigation, a family, or a business partnership—is connected. It has a structure similar to the wheel of a bicycle and all the people in this group are like spokes of the wheel, tied into a common hub. Therefore, when the tension of one of the spokes is altered, all the other spokes are affected.

Very simply put, we can feel more at peace when someone in our presence feels more at peace. For example, if someone in an argument stops feeling defensive, the other person(s) in the argument may feel less defensive.

In my Grouppeace work, I have often been amazed as to how the energy of a conflicted group shifts when one person does a Grouppeace session. In one Grouppeace session, an attorney representing a woman in a very ugly custody case gained some clarity over how and why the two parties in the litigation were fighting so hard. . He knew what his client was going through because she had wounds which were mirrored, to some degree, in his own life. When he saw the wounds of his client and his opponent, he felt a greater degree of compassion towards both sides of the litigation. When he invoked peace and the highest and best for all concerned, he felt more unified within himself.

Within a week, the attorney called to tell me that a minor miracle had happened in his case. For the first time in years, his opponent had been less reactive, less defensive and had actually compromised on certain visitation issues.

The attorney’s compassion for and awareness of both sides had energetically changed the tension of wheel spokes of this group conflict. And instead of conflict at the center of the hub, the highest and best for all concerned came through for the first time. A major accomplishment.

4. Peacemaking and Grouppeace work starts within oneself.

Today, when I tell people that I do energy healing work, people often ask me how they can learn to do this kind of work. And I tell them: they can start by looking within.

Lawyers do not like this answer. We are trained to see conflict as something on the outside to fix, manipulate, resolve, litigate, or mediate. We lawyers want skill training that will teach us tactics and strategies that will be beneficial for our clients—and, hopefully, profitable for us.

But Grouppeace and peacemaking is not necessarily a skill to learn, not a step-by-step tactic or strategy. Instead, it is about you connecting into your own internal wisdom and peace and holding that space for others in a conflicted group. As you hold that space for others, they will just eventually and quite naturally gravitate towards that wiser and more peaceful state of being.

So what does this mean in practical terms? It means that, in order to learn Grouppeace work, we need to give ourselves the gift of time for ourselves, for self-reflection, and for self-healing. Only when we can tap into our own sense of peace can we really help others find theirs.

I can touch that place sometimes. I experience that peace as very fluid, deep and vast, a feeling that can wash over me like a river.

And yes, I am still trying to learn how to integrate all this “energy healing stuff” into my personal and professional life. I still sometimes yell at my kids to clean their rooms. My husband and I still go on emotional roller coaster rides. But then I have to laugh or cry at myself and go on. Peace is not an end result, but a lifetime process.

Meditation for Lawyers by George J. Felos

Gretchen Duhaime — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 14:14:43 GMT

Copyright, George J. Felos, 2001. Reprinted here with permission.

A nineteenth century saint was once asked, “How can one realize God,” to which he replied, “One must think of the Lord incessantly, like a lawyer does of his cases.” Apparently, even the mystics understand how our minds become saturated with our legal work. Especially while litigating, I am amazed how my mind constantly percolates and churns the case facts, issues, witnesses, strategies, and so on. Truly incessant, my mind will offer its suggestions while I’m sleeping, eating, and in my last case, showering. I laughed upon realizing that I couldn’t even scrub without my mental voice presenting some new angle on a potential evidentiary dispute. There’s nothing wrong with being mentally consumed with our work. The problem is turning down the mental volume and slowing our mental speed when our work does not demand this involvement.

Unfortunately, overuse of our mental faculty often makes it difficult to relax the mind at the times we intend to unwind and enjoy a break from our work. We suffer the fate of the sorcerer’s apprentice. If you remember the movie Fantasia, Mickey Mouse disobediently uses his master’s magic to animate broomsticks to fill a vat with buckets of well-water, (the apprentice’s task), but when the job is completed, he can’t stop the magical workers from dumping more water and flooding the castle. A drowning Mickey is saved by the return of the sorcerer, who angrily utters the proper incantation to stop the spell. We have created these vast and useful intellects to do our bidding, yet without learning how to operate the shut-off switch, our willing servants can demonize us by preventing the relaxation, renewal, and inner peace that are necessary for our well-being.

Simply put, meditation is mind-control—you learning how to control your own mind. Control does not mean subjugation. The mind is obviously an essential tool. It serves us best when treated well, and like any servant, performs optimally and according to our wishes when it is respected and treated with kindness.

The process of meditation is simple. Sit comfortably in a quiet place with your spine erect, head straight, and eyes closed. Observe carefully the procession of thoughts and sensations. Notice what is passing through your awareness, without any need to alter your experience or change your thoughts or sensations. Let your awareness be unconnected to the objects of its attention. Keep your attention clear, yet relaxed. Your attention is like an adjustable lens of a camera. You can be under- or over-focused. Either way the result is a blur. Meditation is the same way. If insufficient energy is given to your attention, you tend to daydream or doze off. If too much effort is used, the process becomes strained and the mind becomes fatigued or agitated. Find the balance between slothfulness and trying too hard. A good meditation posture helps to maintain this balance.

Most meditation systems use a “focal point,” a place to return the attention to, when you become caught in the mind’s wanderings. The most common focal point is the sensation of the breath as it enters and exits the tip of the nostrils. As you are meditating focus your attention on this sensation of the breath. If a thought arises, watch it pass by. Sometimes though, one thought will trigger a chain of thought. You might think of a particular client, and before you know it, you’re mentally reviewing the causes of action for the pleading you will be drafting later that week.
Your focal point enables you to pull yourself out of that daydream. It serves as a reminder to bring your attention back to the present—the sensation of the breath entering and exiting the nostrils. No matter how often your attention strays, gently but firmly bring your attention back to your focal point.

Different traditions use different focal points. Early Christian monks were fond of using the sensation of the abdomen rising and falling caused by diaphragmatic movement. Many Eastern traditions use “mantras,” which are repetitive sounds internally or externally chanted. Many Western monks intone the “Jesus prayer:” “Lord Jesus Christ have mercy on my soul.” All of these focal points share a common principle—give the attention a home base, a place to rest and return to during the meditation process. Pick a focal point that appeals to you and stick with it.

While the process of meditation is simple, it is far from easy. If your unruly mind has been your master for your entire life, it’s not about to now compliantly surrender control. We lawyers think of ourselves as powerful and highly competent advocates, accomplishing remarkable things by the energy of our will and talent. If you hanker for a lesson in humility, try meditating and see how your power of attention holds up against the errant movements of your mind. See how long you can focus on the sensation of the breath before your attention is diverted.

Understanding how the mind works facilitates meditation. The first principle of the mind is that, at any one moment, there is only one object of its attention. Because mental attention jumps so quickly from object to object, (three or four times per second, according to scientists), many mistakenly believe that the conscious mind is simultaneously occupied with numerous objects of attention. Let’s say you are at a football game and you are cold and thirsty. You might say that you are watching the play on the field and are aware of your thirst and body temperature at the same time. But this is what really is occurring: the teams line up; a thought about what play will be called arises; a contraction in a back muscle captures your attention; the thought “I wish I brought my heavy jacket” arises; the ball is snapped; the thought, “He doesn’t have time to get a pass off” arises; you feel a scratchy sensation in your throat; the mental image of the beer vendor crosses your mind; you experience a reaction of irritation because you remember that the vendor hasn’t been seen this quarter; you see the pass thrown; you feel a thumping in your chest as the ball is in the air; etc. In a second or two you have experienced multiple “mind moments,” as I like to call them. They consist of either thoughts or sensations. And they happen so rapidly that we barely recognize them as individual entities.

Meditation—the practice of awareness without judgment—slows down the mental procession. Easing mental rapidity allows you to see each “mind moment” as an individual entity. When this begins to occur, you may notice something else. Each thought or sensation has a beginning and an end and there is a space between each “mind moment.” It’s like being stopped at a railroad crossing and watching the passing freight train. When the train is whizzing by, the individual boxcars seem to blur together. Yet, if the train slows, you can begin to see each boxcar as a distinct object, and if the train is slowed sufficiently, you can see the space between each of the cars. And what is there in the spaces between your thoughts and sensations? And for that matter, what are the benefits of meditation and who is it that is observing all that passes? That is for each of us to discover. Give it a try. Like any new endeavor, regular practice is essential. Select a quiet time and place where you won’t be disturbed. Set aside twenty minutes for meditation every day and do it for one month. The results may surprise you.

Good luck!

Holistic Lawyering in the Mainstream

Gretchen Duhaime — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 15:59:35 GMT

by Ed Shapiro

We’ve all heard of holistic lawyering in the fields of family law, personal injury law, estate planning, i.e., those practices that inherently involve the lives of individual human beings. Can holistic law be applied in a traditional mainstream corporate practice? Absolutely. As we all know, corporate parties involved in transactions or conflict are comprised of individual human beings. These human beings, be they members of the board of directors, senior management, or employees, experience the same pain, anxiety, and desire for respect and resolution as individuals involved in a divorce, custody battle or personal injury case. Moreover, the core principles of a holistic practice - - compassion, respect, forgiveness, responsibility and healing - - empower mainstream clients to make healthier business decisions and live healthier work and personal lives.
Is it possible to discuss forgiveness, responsibility, and healing with the general counsel of a Fortune 500 company? You would be surprised. In the litigation context, those discussions typically arise out of a desire by most mainstream corporate clients to reduce litigation costs and to resolve conflict as quickly and efficiently as practicable. In order to do that, one must be willing to analyze a conflict beyond the traditional “facts and law” approach. That approach is predominantly focused on determining what claims, defenses, or counterclaims apply to a particular conflict. Indeed, the principal decision-makers who enter both sides of the transaction need to discuss what they hope to achieve, both in the short and long term. The required discussion can serve as a reality testing process whereby a determination can be made as to what responsibility, if any, your client has for contributing to the conflict. Often, this type of discussion leads to an understanding by your client that the company’s position is neither 100% right nor 100% wrong. It is through these types of discussions that there is the possibility for compassion and understanding of the “whole” conflict. This process, as well as a full understanding of each party’s responsibility in the conflict, gives rise to the possibility of accepting the past, learning from it, and counseling clients to transform their future business practices.
It is also possible to assist corporate clients in transforming their corporate culture. Application of basic holistic principles can influence not only how corporations deal with customers, vendors, providers and other contractual partners, but also the way labor and management interact with each other. None of this can be achieved without all parties buying in to the importance of respecting one another, even when holding divergent views.
One type of holistic legal practice, collaborative law, is ripe for a mainstream corporate application. In general, collaborative lawyers and their clients sign a pledge at the beginning of a dispute that they will not go to court. If the parties cannot resolve the dispute, then the attorneys agree that they will withdraw their representation and refer the clients to other attorneys.
When collaborative law began, its most successful application was in the family law context. However, given the increasing desire to resolve conflict quickly, efficiently, and economically, and given the fact that almost 95% of mainstream commercial litigation cases settle at some point in the litigation process, mainstream lawyers and their clients will gravitate toward collaborative law. It will become as commonplace as the pledge that many large mainstream law firms and Fortune 500 companies sign to attempt to resolve conflicts through alternative dispute resolution measures such as mediation and arbitration.
All this being said, it should be noted that transforming mainstream legal culture is no easy task. It requires the courage to speak from the heart and the willingness to risk, knowing that certain mainstream clients may not be interested in this approach. The initial “selling point” will be the positive impact that a holistic view of legal conflict will have--and its likely consequence of creative, non-litigious resolutions. Once this occurs, mainstream corporate clients will begin to demand this approach. The other, perhaps more important benefits, include healthier management, healthier labor, and increased productivity and profits.
Healthier people = healthier business. There are no empirical studies supporting this last statement. However, one possible predictor of this positive result could be the recent growing acceptance, after many years of opposition, of the alternative/holistic medicine movement.
Initially, many practitioners were deemed “quacks,” among other things. Now, it is not unusual for a traditionally trained mainstream physician to have knowledge of alternative remedies and, in some cases, to support the use of those remedies. As with alternative/holistic medicine, the point of treatment is not to judge either the traditional or alternative/holistic approach as better or worse. Instead, the focus must be on how to expand the information and options to practitioners and clients such that they can be empowered to resolve conflict in healthier ways.

Lawyers as Community Builders and Peacemakers

Gretchen Duhaime — Tue, 04 May 2010 19:07:44 GMT

by Thomas Lynch, III

We lawyers frequently lose sight of the fact that we are an important part of a larger world community. More often than not, we find ourselves focusing on minutia and crisis management, bouncing from one client problem to another. We thereby lose any sense of the “flow” of our lives and, frequently, become disillusioned. That is precisely where I found myself some six or eight years ago. By what typically would be considered objective criteria, I had achieved modest success in the traditional world of the practice of law. I was a partner in a major institutional law firm, heading the firm’s environmental and alternative dispute resolution groups, had achieved a comfortable level of income, and had the respect of my peers in the firm and at the bar. However, despite this modest success, I found myself increasingly frustrated in the role of an advocate and the hollowness of victories achieved through advocacy.

Through the intercession of an introspective client, I was introduced to a small but powerful book entitled Seeing the Law Differently, Views from a Spiritual Path, written by Alan Reid, whose experience was not unlike my own, although with a Canadian law firm. Reid’s small text opened my eyes to a new way of viewing the practice of law: namely, coming to an understanding that legal problems should be viewed as being a source of growth not only for our clients, but for all involved in the legal controversy. Reid suggested that legal problem solving could be more fulfilling if one seeks to understand the objectives of the “adversary” and to eliminate personal enmity.

The insight of this small book changed my view of the practice of law, and, quite candidly, caused me to alter my life plan. Reid’s book opened my mind to the recognition that we, in the legal community, have the potential of serving a valuable role as community builders and peacemakers. By altering my own perspectives on the diverse talents lawyers can bring to the table, my frustration in the practice of law gave way to the growing satisfaction in being part of and serving my community.

Through volunteering in various organizations in the community, I have found myself increasingly using legal and peace building skills to help promote a better way of solving problems. Among other things, I was involved in establishing (and have chaired for the last three years) a non-profit, non-partisan consensus-building organization with a Board of Directors that consists of executive level personnel of organizations from throughout my community-- including the non-profit community: churches, business community, real estate development industry, minority communities, etc. This organization has devoted itself to providing a forum for the free and frank exchange of ideas in a community that is enduring significant growth pains. Our organization has been instrumental in formulating a Code of Civility in Public Discourse, which has now been adopted by the legislative bodies of the municipalities and county government in my county. In addition, our Board of Education and various other organizations throughout the community have adopted our Civility Code as a model.

The Civility Code is only one part of a more extensive peace-building effort, which has involved not only this community-based organization but also our local Bar Association.

Among other things, these organizations have been instrumental in promoting the following programs:

(a) A peer mediation program in our middle schools whereby fifth and sixth graders seek to resolve their own problems with the assistance of mentors;

(b) A multi-cultural peace-building initiative in one of our local high schools, which has been most troubled by gang activity and racial unrest. This peace-building effort has led to improved dialogue and relations among the student population.

Our work remains unfinished, quite obviously, but this community involvement has served to promote a greater level of personal satisfaction for me in my day-to-day existence and allows me to approach the practice of law with a more positive attitude.

Originally published in 2002.

Difficult People as Spiritual Teachers: A Mental Health Practice for Everyday Life

Gretchen Duhaime — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 18:32:01 GMT

by Cal Appleby

The practice of allowing difficult people to be teachers for you is a mental health practice for everyday life. It provides an opportunity to be mindful and calm in our busy, difficult, and often chaotic lives. This practice goes hand in hand with self awareness meditations emphasizing calming and clearing of the mind. It also serves as a skillful means toward stress reduction, peace keeping, and conflict resolution.

Most of the time when we encounter difficult people, we react with habitual thoughts, feelings, and behaviors which lead to avoidance, blaming, or attempting to make that person less difficult. This fight-or-flight pattern, which often results in our suffering and the triggering of anger, conflict, or violence, aborts the possible journey of self discovery that is before us. If we allow ourselves to be open and in effect to become a psychonaut (an inner astronaut), we hold up a mirror to ourselves, see our cutting edge, and notice what is unfinished in our own development. Difficult people may become great spiritual teachers for us, waking us from our "fool's paradise" to realistically look at ourselves in relation to our highest ideals. Paradoxically, sometimes our friends just help us to stay asleep.

For obvious reasons, we prefer the company of our friends and loved ones, and we avoid difficult people. However, those challenging people have a knack for finding us despite our preferences. This occurs simply because we are human, with a rich assortment of buttons that we allow to be pushed.

The fact is that a person whom we find difficult may not be equally difficult to someone else, and not even to ourselves at another time. Also, we may be a difficult person to another and even to ourselves and be unaware of that fact. Thus, the perception of "difficult" lies in the eye of the beholder.

A Tibetan teaching suggests that we should cherish difficult people as though we had found a precious jewel of supreme value. Why is this so? Difficult people require us to develop the virtues of patience, forgiveness, tolerance, and acceptance. Compassion and loving kindness have a chance to arise when we understand more deeply that the behavior of these people derives from their own suffering (hurt people hurt people). In recognizing this, we are seeing the person who is difficult as being essentially innocent, in the sense that he or she is doing the best that they know how, that they genuinely want to be happy, and that if they knew better, they would do better. This kind of reframing helps us have compassion for victim and perpetrator alike. In so doing, we are not condoning bad behavior or surrendering our boundaries -- we are simply recognizing the actual situation.

If we can see at least one good thing in someone, we can begin to see them more accurately. We may need to "reteach a thing its loveliness." We need to have benevolent intent toward everyone we meet. One antidote for our own negativity toward difficult people is to project the highest thought and image of that person that we are able to conceive. This might include praying that they be happy and realize their highest enlightenment and liberation in this lifetime. We should love our enemies -- after all, we created them. When we wake up and open our hearts and minds to all and everything, we learn to feel limitless gratitude for our friends, our loved ones and even to those who deeply challenge us.

For some time, a colleague and I have been teaching classes and workshops on the topic of difficult persons as teachers. We often joke that one sure way of inviting difficult persons into our lives is to prepare to teach another class. The following incident took place as I was preparing once again to teach another workshop. As always, it seemed a wake up call from my fool's paradise.

I recently had eaten a sandwich at a local shop, and as I walked out to the sidewalk I pulled my keys from my fanny pack and unknowingly dropped my wallet. Upon returning home, I noticed my wallet was gone and called the shop. A waitress said that a young man had turned it in with no cash in it. I went to the shop and retrieved it. Nothing was taken other than about $100.

My initial reaction was irritation. I began ruminating about the incident, and kept trying to figure out some explanation for how it had happened. I felt stuck in a frustrating closed loop of low mood speculation. Then I decided to practice what I had been preaching in my teachings on difficult people as teachers. I was obviously on the cutting edge of my own growth. I needed to find space and a creative response in order to open up the situation. Reframing what had happened seemed to be a logical starting point.
It was particularly helpful to recall that everything that happens to us is usable and can be taken onto the spiritual path. Then I remembered stories of men and women who had responded creatively to loss and disaster. Like the Zen master who wished he could give the moon to the thief who had just robbed him, or the sage who reflected that he now could see the moon more clearly after his house had burned down. Or, Ram Dass's viewing his stroke as "fierce grace." I was reminded not to be swept away by the worldly winds of loss and gain, pleasure and pain.

The following is a distillation of how I now see the situation after several days of reflection:
1. I realize that the loss could have been worse, that my wallet could have been taken and never returned.
2. I realize that my awareness and mindfulness had lapsed, and that more serious consequences might have resulted.
3. I see that my upset and suffering were created by my clinging and attachment and my resistance to accepting what had happened.
4. I view the person who took the money as possibly needing it more than I did.
5. This incident provided an opportunity for me to see that person through eyes of compassion, and to understand that he was innocent in the sense that he was doing the best that he knew how at that time. An opportunity for me to hope for him to be happy, and to have highest self realization in his lifetime.
6. I dedicated the experience to the waking up of all beings who feel a sense of lack and insufficiency, and who are motivated to take what doesn't belong to them. And realizing that in my earlier life this condition applied to me.
7. Having gone to many workshops costing $100 and much more, I realize that this $100 is a most valuable investment in a living workshop that is teaching me much more than most of the others -- a very sound investment indeed.
Even though this person was anonymous, I perceived and interpreted him or her to be a difficult person creating a challenging situation for me. This situation is similar to someone receiving harrassing anonymous phone calls, or a burglar who robs our house when we are not at home. Difficult people fall on a continuum from unseen and anonymous to direct in your face confrontational. The above principles are relevant to any difficult person encounter on that continuum.

Also, please regard this experience as one example of how an encounter with a difficult person might be reevaluated as a mental health practice in choosing peace, loving kindness, and true happiness in everyday life. Every person will have his or her own unique and creative way of reframing a "difficult person" incident, and in doing so, that challenging person may become a great spiritual teacher and a real blessing.

Originally published on iahl.org in 2002

The Nicest Tough Firm Around by Steven Keeva

Gretchen Duhaime — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 04:27:58 GMT

Steven Keeva is the author of Transforming Practices: Finding Joy and Satisfaction in the Legal Life (Tenth Anniversary edition available here).

As a police officer in Kalamazoo, Mich., John Minehart was a sight to behold. At 6-foot-1, his powerful legs supported 250 pounds of solid muscle and snarl. The toughest cop in town, he delighted in the respect and fear he inspired in those who beheld him. It was all there in the only name anyone ever called him: "Spike."

One night in April 1991, after 24 years on the force, Spike suddenly became John again. He was struck by a drunk driver while attending to a traffic accident. In that moment, the body that had been the centerpiece of his identity became a different body. He lost his right leg and, in the days that followed, became paralyzed in the left one. He wanted to die.

But he had two things going for him. First, his family. Although he was certain his wife would now leave him, she knew she would be in it for the long haul.

Then there was his lawyer. Minehart had known Rick Halpert casually, running into him now and then while walking the beat in the city's open-air mall. And he had read about some of the big verdicts Halpert's firm had won for clients. But he did not know then what mattered most about the successful personal injury lawyer and his partners: They were exactly what he needed, in ways he could never have imagined.

After the accident, Minehart's sense of self-worth was on the critical list, and Halpert (with his then partner, Jim Koning) worked tirelessly to restore it. This involved spending untold hours with him, trying to convince him that his wife had no intention of leaving and that his daughters needed him. "We had to show him that there was more to him to love than his machismo and physical strength," says Halpert.

Minehart's story is one of dozens that could illustrate the workings of Halpert, Weston, Wuori & Sawusch, a plaintiffs law firm in Kalamazoo that puts healing above profits and compassion before ego. If much of what people say about the four-lawyer firm sounds too good to be true, that is offset by the sheer number of sources who corroborate the picture that emerges.

Holistic Approach

The lawyers aren't saints, nor do they live monastic lives, but they have built a highly successful law firm on a solid foundation of caring, uncommon attentiveness to clients' needs, and advocacy that serves the client in a broad and holistic way.

Even frequent opponents are hard-pressed to say anything negative about these personal injury lawyers, beyond a few cracks about what some see as a tendency toward self-promotion. On the positive side, opponents admire their professionalism and say that if Halpert West-on brings a claim, it almost certainly is legitimate.

The firm, which opened its doors in January 1996, has developed an expertise in burn, and spinal cord and brain injury cases. It is well known in Michigan for the size of its settlements and judgments, and won the two largest re-corded settlements in the state last year. But financial success doesn't begin to account for the enthusiasm and fondness expressed for the lawyers by clients and health care professionals. Minehart is a good example. His lawsuit for the car accident was settled in 1992 for a five-figure sum, not a great deal of money. (He got a much larger settlement in a separate medical malpractice claim, a kind of case Halpert Weston will not handle.) Still, he says he trusts Halpert with his life.

"When you've got someone who understands you as a person and takes the time to deal with you, rather than just with the case, it's all the difference in the world," Minehart says.

Doctors, nurses and social workers-many of whom were skeptical at first-say they are amazed by the firm's dedication to clients' well-being. And clients themselves say they feel as if their lawyer is theirs alone.

The point, says Halpert, is that getting money is hardly the most significant thing he and his partners do for clients. "It's working with the pain and horror of what they've been through that really matters," he says. "The most important aspect of their healing has nothing to do with the lawsuit. That simply finances our services so that we can provide the care and love to help them make it through."

If that sounds like self-promotion or New Age drivel, consider this: Seven years after Halpert settled Minehart's case, the two still get together regularly. Halpert visits him at home on Christmas, dressed as Santa and bearing gifts for his young daughters, and he is available to discuss any of the ongoing difficulties that Minehart continues to endure.

At Halpert Weston, relationships rarely end with the conclusion of a legal action, simply because the realities of living with a personal tragedy do not evaporate once the settlement or judgment is paid. The law firm's mission, to improve clients' lives physically, psychologically, emotionally and financially, requires nothing less.

That can mean driving a badly burned client who lacks transportation to a distant medical center for treatment. Or spending doz-ens of hours listening to a widow describing her grief after her husband's accidental death before even beginning to discuss the legal case. Or working to get benefits for a brain-damaged patient, even if there is no one to sue and no fee to collect. Or taking a key role in starting a local camp for burn patients.

It always means giving out office, home and cell phone numbers and returning calls promptly. And it means visiting clients at home, because that is where they are most comfortable, most able to be themselves.

Although the Halpert Weston partners share a deep commitment to a common vision of what personal injury work should be, their backgrounds are rather diverse. Only one - Steven Weston - always wanted to represent injured people.

"I worked in a hospital emergency room in college," he recalls. "I saw people who had been literally ripped apart. My dad was a social worker, my mom a nurse, and I heard so much about injured people getting the shaft. Since sixth grade I've wanted to be a lawyer."

The two other lawyers, Thomas Wuori and Bonnie Sawusch, were former judicial clerks who joined the firm because they were surprised and intrigued by what they saw as a very different way of doing things.

Wuori never planned to do plaintiffs work, and Sawusch was determined not to. A former nurse, she wanted nothing more than to represent physicians in medical malpractice cases "and get all those plaintiffs attorneys."

All three began practicing with Halpert when he was running the personal injury department in the Kalamazoo office of Detroit's Howard & Howard. "When I interviewed with Howard & Howard, I couldn't believe how different they were," says Sawusch. "And they promised me they wouldn't do med-mal."

After interviewing Sawusch for the job, Halpert called Patricia Boyle, a Michigan Supreme Court justice for whom Sawusch had clerked. After Boyle praised Sawusch's intellect and how hard she worked, Halpert asked her a question that, she says, she had never been asked before about a job applicant: "What can you tell me about her compassion?"

"I remember that conversation and I was so heartened by it that it remains with me today," Boyle says.

Of course, lawyers are not taught to get so involved in clients' lives. Legal education often warns against it, the concern being a compromised ability to remain objective. But Halpert Weston attorneys are very clear about why they get so involved.

Without doing so, they say, it is hard to understand with any depth what clients actually go through. And really knowing what it means to face daily life in their condition and how it affects their relationships is the stuff of effective and passionate advocacy.

Sawusch recalls the example of a woman who had lost her son in a car accident. Although she had seen the client many times in the office, where the woman hadn't seemed too distraught, Sawusch decided to see what she could learn by visiting her at home.

"She had the heat turned way up, and the shades drawn so that there was no light at all coming in," she recalls. "And there was no food in the house. It was like a tomb in there. That's when I realized what was going on under the surface."

Sometimes, Halpert Weston lawyers discover that simple humanity requires an unusual level of lawyer-client bonding. In one case, that of a horrifically burned child whose parents were too dysfunctional to help him recover, Wuori became a surrogate big brother.

As the case was winding down, the child, who was 10 at the time, asked Wuori whether they would continue to be good friends. "There wasn't one reliable adult in his life until this tragedy," says Wuori, who remains close to the boy five years later.

Finally, there is the sheer pleasure of helping others. An example: When a client was having a hard time dealing with fears that her severely burned 7-year-old daughter would never live a happy and productive life, the firm took her to a conference for burn survivors in Canada - all expenses paid. There her mind was put at ease when she met with a group of women who had suffered serious burns as children and had grown up to lead happy, successful lives.

"When you're emotionally intimate with a person who's going through a terrible time and you can make a difference," Halpert says, "there's an incredible joy in that."

A Pioneering Concept

There is really only one way a law firm can fulfill the mission that Halpert, Weston, Wuori & Sawusch has set for itself - by limiting the number of cases it takes.

"The reason we can do what we do," says Weston, "is that Rick pioneered a concept that is counterintuitive to the practice of law: If you accept a very limited number of cases and you beat the living hell out of them, it gives you more time to spend with your individual clients, more knowledge and more passion to go to bat for them. And more time to delve into the legal, medical and damages sides."

Where it is not uncommon for individual personal injury lawyers to have 100, 150 or even more cases open at a given time, Halpert Weston partners limit themselves to no more than 20. That means they must turn down about eight out of 10 cases. But even their approach to doing that is unusual.

"You have to help them plan where they'll go from here," Wuori says of the people who the firm does not accept as clients.

"There is a lot of healing that goes on in helping a person realize that, one, the law does not have a remedy for them; or two, the cost of the remedy may exceed the benefit; or three, you don't need to bring a lawsuit. ... You then may help them by getting them counseling, help with their pain, referrals and so on."

This goes to the heart of the firm's attitude about money: If you worry about taking care of your clients - and even people who never become clients - the money takes care of itself.

Still, you have got to get the clients in the first place. A small percentage of Halpert Weston clients come from their Yellow Pages ad. It's hard to miss. Across the top, in one-half-inch-tall letters, it shouts out a rather compelling number: "$32,000,000" - the total projected future payment for a structured settlement in a burn case.

Taking care of people and winning record verdicts are not inconsistent, Halpert says. "You don't do clients a favor by being sensitive to their feelings and then leaving them penniless." Money may be the carrot, but clients and the health care professionals who care for them say the healing touch is the real payoff. In fact, the overwhelming majority of cases come directly from social workers, doctors, nurses, other lawyers and clients who recommend the firm because of the nonmonetary benefits it offers.

"I was skeptical about them at first because my experience with attorneys hadn't been very good," says Susan de Groot, a social worker who works with burn patients in Grand Rapids. "But they have shown me over and over that their concern about clients' well-being is paramount. They are there, whether there is money in it or not.

Sandy Loyer worked for 16 years as a social worker for trauma and spinal-cord-injury patients, a job in which she says she had a chance to evaluate a lot of lawyers.

"Their interest is clearly in the patient and the family - how they are coping and dealing with things," she says.

"And I can always call on Rick to help a person from whom he'll get nothing. I've never been this comfortable with lawyers before."

One Kalamazoo attorney whose firm does insurance defense work (and who asked that his name not be used) suggests there is another reason that cases come rolling in to Halpert Weston. He acknowledges that the firm's lawyers are good, but adds that Halpert can be flamboyant and something of a self-promoter.

For his part Halpert pleads guilty to charges of self-promotion. He frequently takes advantage of invitations to lecture in the state's continuing legal education program, and sees that as a good opportunity to keep his firm's name in the public eye.

He points out, too, that he enjoys a good relationship with the local newspaper and lets reporters know about a significant verdict or settlement. "They like it because they think it's newsworthy, and from my point of view, it's a good way to get our name out there."

But the insurance defense lawyer says he has one more criticism of the firm. "With them, everything is the world's most important case, and they can't all be the most important."

That is a complaint all four lawyers say they can live with.

Compassion Tops List

One of the more common reactions to the firm's success is characterized this way by Steven Weston, who says that an overemphasis on narrow, practical considerations often obscures big-picture thinking: "People will say, 'I don't have the luxury you have because I don't have those big cases. If I were in your shoes maybe I could work that way, too.' "

Weston describes this attitude as a "chicken-or-the-egg thing. Which comes first, getting the big cases or taking care of your clients' needs?" He doesn't think there's much question. "Be good to clients, and you get into that situation."

It may, at least, be worth a try.

History and Development of Collaborative Law

Gretchen Duhaime — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 19:08:16 GMT

by Nora Bushfield, originally published on IAHL.org in 2002

Collaborative Law came about as the result of one man’s desperation. In the late 1980's, after practicing traditional civil law for eight years and then family law for an additional seventeen years, Stuart "Stu" Webb, a family law practitioner in Minneapolis, Minnesota, was approaching burnout. He, like many of us who practice in the field of family conflict, hated the adversarial nature of his practice. It was becoming harder and harder to tolerate the schizophrenic nature of trial and family practice. Incivility seemed on the increase rather than the decrease. In other words, he'd had it.

Prepared to close down his practice, he started taking courses in psychology at the local university. It did not take long, however, for Stu to realize that his future did not lie in becoming a psychologist. Then he started thinking. If he was willing to start over, maybe he could come up with a different way to structure a family law practice, which kept only those parts of his practice that he truly enjoyed.

So Stu started experimenting. After some successes and failures, Collaborative Law was born. In this family law model, attorneys work collaboratively with the parties to achieve a win/win solution for everyone. Information is shared and the parties agree that they will not litigate during this process. When disagreements arise, often outside experts—such as financial planners, therapists, child advocates—are brought in to help create a solution that will work for the entire family. If no solutions are possible, the parties can still litigate, but then they will have to retain new and different lawyers.

Stu started practicing collaborative family law exclusively as of January 1, 1990, but he could not practice collaboratively by himself. So, he started seeking other family lawyers who would be willing to try the collaborative model. He began on a case-by-case basis asking for a collaborative commitment. A local “institute” started with four attorneys. By 2000 there were 45 members of the Collaborative Law Institute in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis/St. Paul. Under Stu’s leadership, the Institute conducts training, sends out information and membership lists to prospective clients, and offers support meetings to members.

It was not long until Stu started hearing from lawyers in other states. California was one of the first, leading to an alliance between Stu and Pauline Tressler from the San Francisco area. Stu and Pauline have conducted separate and joint training sessions around the country and Canada, including Georgia, Florida, and a number of sites in California, Vancouver, Winnipeg, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Wisconsin and Texas.

Some areas of the country--for example, Ohio--are working toward creating collaborative law models which can be used in different types of legal cases. The Collaborative Family Law Project reports that as many as 100 cases were resolved by attorneys using the collaborative law process. Collaborative Law or Collaborative Family Law (a generic description of the process) is sometimes equated with "Collaborative Divorce." "Collaborative Divorce," fostered by a group of psychotherapist in California, is a highly evolved interdisciplinary team model which utilizes attorneys, therapists, and financial experts in an effort to avoid some of the destructive aspects of divorce. The ABA Family Law Section’s 1999 Spring CLE Conference featured "Collaborative Divorce" as part of its program.

Stu’s effort has fostered the development of collaborative law in both the United States and Canada. At a recent meeting among representatives of groups from both countries, it was agreed that the International Academy of Collaborative Professionals [IACP], (www.collabgroup.com), should serve as the hub for this exciting movement. The IACP publishes a quarterly journal and facilitates national meetings on Collaborative Law.

Passionate Practitioner by Steven Keeva

Gretchen Duhaime — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 18:46:15 GMT

Steven Keeva is the author of Transforming Practices: Finding Joy and Satisfaction in the Legal Life (Tenth Anniversary edition available here).

Once on the brink of suicide, Texas lawyer John McShane dispatched his demons and dedicated himself to finding fulfillment in the law. Now he helps others find meaning in their practices.

John McShane smiles with his eyes, as though he feels lucky to have them--these clear blue portals onto a world that constantly amazes him. On the same face, just above the chin, is a moon-shaped scar--a story in flesh, of a time when he drank too much, raged too much, felt too much fear and loneliness. Back then, in what he calls his outlaw years, he romanticized the desperate lives of his criminal clients and frequently mimicked their excesses.

A scene from those times (the early 1970s): McShane is defending a drug dealer in a federal courtroom in Dallas. After he leaves the room during a recess, his client passes a note to the judge claiming McShane is too drunk to adequately represent him.

McShane returns to find that the judge wants him on the witness stand, for a hearing to determine sobriety of defense counsel. Once there, the judge examines him, finally deciding he's OK to continue.

Today, he jokes that he's probably the only lawyer in Texas who's been found sober by a federal judge.

Fact is, he got lucky.

McShane is sitting on a wooden bench in what he refers to as one of his Waldens--places he goes during the day to be alone and meditate. This particular spot--a quiet, hedge-enclosed garden--abuts a plaza next to the mirrored Dallas office building that has been home to McShane, Davis & Hance, a 5-lawyer family law boutique, since 1993. McShane himself practices family law in addition to criminal law, and also handles professional license discipline matters.

"There's an Italian expression -- la dolce far niente: the sweet doing of nothing. I love doing nothing," he says in a Texas accent that makes up in melody for what it lacks in twang. "But I find that doing nothing and meditating--just being--enhances my actual doing at many different levels. It gives me more physical energy, makes me more creative and resilient, and it renews me. And you don't have to be sitting still in order to just be. Snuggling with my grandson is also being."

Hardly the musings of your garden variety trial lawyer, especially one as successful as McShane, who, at 56, is a well-known presence on the Texas legal scene. Still, it took some time for him to get where he is today. For many years now, since taking his life back from the twin agonies of alcoholism and what he refers to as "a whole lot of pathology," he has assiduously cultivated self-knowledge in everything he does.

In a way, McShane's experience--equal parts emotional, intellectual and spiritual--has uniquely prepared him for this moment in his life, when his personal agenda is wrapped around a central theme. Here's a way of looking at it: after 30 years of practicing in Texas courtrooms, McShane has handled nearly as many exhibits as the Dallas art museum. But these days he himself is exhibit number one in a case he's taking to what could be the toughest "jury" of his career--his peers.

Here's his message: "I want lawyers to know that it is not only possible to have a joyful, meaningful law practice, but that there isn't another activity around that offers more opportunity for both personal growth and making a difference in other people's lives."

What McShane has done, and what he has been teaching other lawyers to do, is to view law practice as a living laboratory for self-exploration and renewal, a constantly expanding field of opportunity. It's a chance to form meaningful relationships, laugh, learn and grow. But not until a certain hurdle is overcome.

"The thing is, we're great at fighting and negotiating for our clients," he says. "But we often misuse our boldness and don't use it to claim full and rich lives for ourselves. We can be timid souls when it comes to doing that."

McShane's not naive. He's been through too much for too long to gloss over the very real challenges to heart and soul that are posed by law practice today. It's just that he's learned how to make his professional life into something that so many others have despaired of ever finding; and he's not shy about discussing it.

Nothing happens in which he can't find blessings, usually enough to counterbalance much of whatever damage may have been done. "I just lost a criminal case, and it hurt," he says. "I litigated it with great passion and conviction because the client is someone I care deeply about. But I've already found lots of benefits in the loss. Probably the most important one is that even though we lost, I know for certain that by bringing an ethic of care and a healing orientation to the case, I have made a difference in the client's life regardless of the legal outcome."

This kind of big-picture, holistic thinking characterizes McShane's approach to law practice and accounts for much of the rich meaning he's able to extract from it. "He's a great detail man and a great big picture man," says Judge Dee Miller, a Dallas Family Court Judge before whom McShane has appeared dozens of times over the years. "He' a visionary and an idealist who is also extremely thorough in exploring all the possibilities of settlement and mediation."

Regardless of whether the client is a fabulously wealthy oil tycoon or a destitute felon, McShane sees a healing approach as the one best suited to serving the interests of everyone concerned. He realizes that any talk of such things will cause a certain number of eyebrows to arch. "People will say, `My God, why would a client hire someone with this touchy-feely approach to the law?'" he says. "The answer is, it makes sense. It resonates with that deep universal need for healing."

`A Whole Different Level'

Garry Weber, a well-known Dallas investor, former Dallas County Judge and city councilman, puts it this way: "John simply operates on a whole different level than other lawyers I've been involved with." McShane counseled him on legal and personal issues during a lengthy and emotionally wrenching arbitration that ended last year. "Just knowing him saved me," Weber says.

Practicing the way he does, says McShane, also makes sense in another way. "People may be surprised, but you can do this kind of work, be a healer, do a great deal of good, and be financially successful," McShane says. His hourly rate is as high as any attorney's in Dallas.

The fact that McShane is successful in so many ways--and has the professional kudos and the genuine contentment and wisdom to prove it--has made him a sought after speaker and coach to other lawyers. Bruce Winnick, a professor at the University of Miami School of Law who recently had McShane out to speak to that school's student body, calls him "a spellbinding speaker with an important message for all law students and lawyers." A crucial part of that message is that we can change the world by changing the way law is taught and practiced.

"I think that one of the reasons I have such passion for helping other lawyers is that in my early years I went through a lot of pain and doubt--a dark night of the soul in the practice of law," he says. "At that time, I thought there was something fundamentally wrong with me, that I wasn't adjusting to the practice of law the way most people did.

"Today I find I was not unique. As more and more lawyers confide in me, I recognize the universality of that pain. My message is that you can get your practice to a place that is rich and rewarding and you don't have to go through years of struggle if you have the proper guides and role models."

Deborah Slye Miller, a Dallas family lawyer, has found just that kind of role model in McShane himself. "I do not have an encounter with a judge, opposing attorney, or client that is not influenced by John McShane," she says.

From Outlaw to Warrior

In December 1976, McShane found himself at the bottom of a pit--professionally, emotionally and spiritually. His drinking was out of control and he'd been sued for disbarment. Phone service had been cut off to his office because he couldn't pay the bill, and the IRS had locked the door because of non-payment of taxes. His family life was a shambles, and it wasn't uncommon for him simply to disappear for days at a time.

He had been a lawyer for 10 years, and although he had tasted some success--most notably in a stint as counsel to the General Investigating Committee of the Texas House of Representatives--his demons had come to rule the day.On December 13, his bags packed with booze, prescription drugs and a pistol, he checked into Dallas' historic Adolphus Hotel, planning to leave in a body bag.

Instead, his drunkenness and misery did something they had never done before--they lifted, opening into what McShane calls "a lucid interval." "Suddenly," he says, "it just became clear to me that there was some reason I was supposed to stay alive.

"I was bankrupt in every way. I had no resources. There were no groups then for lawyers like me, no Lawyers Concerned for Lawyers or anything like that. But I decided right then that I would commit myself to turning my life around. I would become the best husband, father, the best lawyer, the best person I could be." He got into recovery later that day and has been sober for more than 23 years.

Not long after the incident in the hotel room, someone handed McShane a small green pamphlet at a meeting in Dallas. It read, "Let God be your senior partner." Feeling certain that a higher power of some kind had intervened in his suicide plans and put him on the road to recovery, he took the pamphlet to heart.

"I decided to see what it would be like if I made this higher power the senior partner in my law practice," he recalls. "I decided I would just do what I could do on the human level every day, and turn the rest over to my higher power. Then, I figured, all I'd have to do was keep my head down and do the next right thing. Then the next."

And so he did, rededicating himself on a daily basis to his new partnership. Then, he recalls, he watched in amazement as miracles began to happen. "For example, when I first sobered up, I had that suit for disbarment pending," he says. "I was penniless and the only lawyer who would defend me was a mentally ill person. In fact, he later committed a murder. "But he too had a lucid interval on the day he argued my case before the state bar. On that day, there was never a better lawyer in Texas. His life intersected with mine at his finest hour."

During the next decade or so, McShane collected an impressive string of "merit badges," as he calls them--honors and distinctions that boosted his profile in the state and local bar. He co-founded Lawyers Concerned for Lawyers to serve the needs of his impaired colleagues; he developed a novel, treatment and rehabilitation based, defense for drunk driving that put him in the national media spotlight; his law practice grew; and in an extraordinary reversal of fortune, he was elected chairman of the State Bar District Six Grievance Committee, the very body that had sought his disbarment years earlier.

He refers to this period as his warrior years. Seeing himself as a crusader for good, he became a student of the role of conflict in people's lives--helping clients cultivate an awareness of the blessings it can hold, and its potential for transforming their lives. But being a warrior, he also fought aggressively to smite the forces that he saw as inimical to his clients' best interests.

It was late in this period of McShane's career that D magazine profiled him in a piece on Dallas' top family lawyers. "Apparently there is more than one John McShane," the article began, going on to contrast his two sides--"the passionate, spiritual risk-taker and a champion of the underdog" on the one hand (the client's view), and "overbearing, self-righteous, and much too confrontational" on the other (the opposing attorney's view).

"During my warrior years, I could be as aggressive as any lawyer there is," he now says. He often behaved that way, he says, because many of his clients were impaired by alcoholism or depression and so started with many handicaps.

Barbara Clark was one such client, an alcoholic who drank her vodka straight from the bottle. McShane represented her in her high-stakes, high-profile divorce. She says she prized his willingness to stand by her and to act as a reality check. "He didn't spend time stroking my ego, he did whatever was necessary to help me out," she says. "I went into treatment four times, and McShane stuck with me through all of them. I was so needy, and he gave me support and affirmation."

Now that she has become a lawyer herself--a development she credits in large measure to McShane's influence--she says she appreciates him even more.

`I'm Not Kidding You'

T. Boone Pickens, the Texas oil magnate who is CEO of Mesa Petroleum, has, in his time, engaged the services of whole armies of lawyers. But, to him, McShane stands apart--as a man and as a lawyer. "He's good, I'm not kidding you," Pickens says. "He just has this special dimension. He has a feel for people and great compassion for his clients, in addition to tremendous credibility with other lawyers."

Pickens recalls the many late-night sessions at McShane's office during the two years it took to settle his divorce. With the tension approaching the breaking point, they would sit and chat about what to do next. "He'd just let me talk it out, then he'd ask, `Do you really think that's a good idea?' And I'd say `no.' Then we'd laugh. In fact, we had lots of laughs. John has a real way of helping to relieve the pressure.

"When people ask what I think of John McShane, I say you can't do any better than him," Pickens says. "And when they ask why, I tell them he's as good as it gets in family law, but more than that, so many more things come with McShane than just the legal stuff."

Recently, Pickens updated his 1987 autobiography for a new edition. "I now mention the divorce," he says. "And I say that one positive thing that came out of it was a great friendship with John McShane. But I also say there are cheaper ways to develop a good friendship than by spending several million dollars on a divorce."

Another celebrity client who says McShane changed her life is the Emmy Award-winning Journalist Paula McClure. Her first contact with McShane was when he handled her divorce 15 years ago.

"He looks at law in such a different way than most lawyers--and I've interviewed countless lawyers over the years," she says. "He sees it as his way to minister to people who need help. He's a person who can get through all the legal jargon and red tape and cut right through everything to your heart and soul and pull you through."

McClure was so impressed with McShane that she hired him to represent her in contract talks when the syndicated television show "Entertainment Tonight" hired her as host. "I went on to do five national TV shows thanks to John," she says.

A Word From the Opposition

The lawyer on the other side in both the Clark and Pickens cases is the man McShane describes as his all-time fiercest opponent. Mike McCurley, perhaps the best-known divorce lawyer in Texas, has opposed McShane in many cases over the years.

Unlike Clark, he's seen McShane in somewhat, oh, less commendable moments. McCurley, who calls himself "one of those take-no-prisoners types," recalls an evening some years ago in McShane's office after a day in which they'd slugged it out in court. McShane was angry at McCurley and became judgmental and confrontational.

"All the stuff he teaches us--be kind to your neighbor and all the rest--it all went out the window," McCurley recalls.

That night, McCurley played against type, refusing to respond in kind. Instead, he went into McShane's outer office and took a copy of "The Winning Attitude," an article McShane had written for Corpus Christi Lawyer and made available to clients.

McShane recalls the rest. "When I left the office later on I noticed this article on our conference room table. I picked it up and saw that various lines had been highlighted." He smiles at the memory's poignance. "It was all the stuff that I tell other people to do that I hadn't done that night." McCurley had made his point.

Although he's quick to point out that McShane is not a saint, the last impression McCurley wants to leave is that he's just another hardnosed lawyer. "Even when we've had these firefights, and we have over the years, we still laugh a lot together," he says. "There is no other opponent quite like John McShane, none that compares to him.

"Unlike so many people who have reached the pinnacle of their profession--and he obviously has--he is constantly working to improve himself. He's truly a master at what he does, he cares about people and tries to make their lives better, and he tries to make our profession better, but he is always learning about what he does. I've learned to be a better man from John McShane."

Claiming the Vision

In the late 1990's, after 20 years in the warrior mode, McShane became aware that his passion for practicing law had begun to wane. Feeling the need to reinvent himself yet again, he set off for Africa with Richard Leider, a friend and mentor, who also happens to be the author of several books on mid-life renewal.

"It was a chance for me to live in the big questions of life, to get in touch with my core values and re-examine what really mattered most," he recalls. He came back, he says, both renewed and with a profound reverence for life--and specifically his own life--and a commitment to living as fully as possible every day.

At first, this intention was all he had, being unsure of what form his commitment would take. "But the power of intention just kind of kicked in, and coaching lawyers became the next step on my journey," he says.

To become a certified professional coach--one dedicated to helping other lawyers--McShane took a course at the Hudson Institute in Santa Barbara, Calif., where Frederic Hudson, the Institute's founder, had a profound affect on him. "He is a great proponent of continuous learning," McShane says. "And being at the Institute ignited in me a much larger passion for learning everything I could learn.

"The legal profession is really a knowing culture, not a learning culture, as we should be. Everyone feels under such great pressure to know. I tell lawyers that they should adopt the Zen posture of beginner's mind." McShane did so himself, reading "everything even remotely to do with how to live and practice law with joy and meaning and passion."

The writer who has influenced McShane most in this regard is Dr. Wayne Dyer. But he also credits Gary Zukav, the bestselling author of The Seat of the Soul, with introducing him to the concept of non-judgmental justice, which, for McShane, has meant learning to practice law without judgment and with compassion for his opponents. "It was an epiphanous experience," he says.

What he realized was that in practicing law as a warrior for good, he had become somewhat self-righteous, judging both the opposition and even his own clients according to some abstract notion of goodness. "I was able to reinvent myself as a more compassionate healer/lawyer/coach and agent of change by first working on healing myself, then radiating that out into the world in my law practice and my life. And healing that part of me--the part that judges others, that sits in judgment of `the bad people' and so forth--was a real important part of it."

What came from all of this is something rather like a recipe for finding joy in the practice of law (see "Coaches Corner" sidebar). Hewing to this hard-won approach with great devotion, McShane systematically tends to both the microcosm, as he calls it--his own inner landscape and the effect it has on his family, his law practice and his clients' need for care and healing--and the macrocosm--the legal profession as a whole.

He meditates, exercises, practices yoga, and performs a personal gratitude ritual every day--all by way of grounding himself, tending to his need for balance and clarity, and focusing his energy and intention.

And he speaks to lawyer groups around the country, explaining how he's found a rich sense of meaning in his law practice and has managed to dramatically reduce stress in his life. Among other legal systemic changes he is involved with, he is spearheading the effort to bring collaborative divorce--a non-combative model in which parties forswear going to court--to Texas.

McShane doesn't have a lot of patience for talk about law practice's good old days, back when lawyers would pick up the phone and call each other rather than reflexively launch fusillades of paper. It's not that he thinks such talk romanticizes the past; it's just that he can't see any reason not to claim that vision as your own--if you believe working that way would make you happy. And so now, for example, he makes it his business whenever possible to share "human moments" with opposing counsel--whatever it may take to bring that about.

"So much of what's wrong in the profession comes from the fact that lawyers don't know each other as people," he says. "It's so easy to be nasty to someone you don't know; it's much harder once you've seen pictures of his grandchildren and talked about what matters to you."

Most lawyers, McShane says, tend to see the practice of law as, at best, a limited feast. He sees it differently. "I intend to claim the whole enchilada," he says. His blue eyes are beaming.

Coach's Corner

Over the years, John McShane has developed a system for bringing more health, balance and fulfillment to the way law is practiced. He uses it in coaching lawyers on achieving joy and finding meaning in their practices. Here are the key elements:

Clarify. Identify your core values. Reading, writing in a journal, meditating and coaching can inform and enhance this process. Resist judging your values as "right" or "wrong." Priorities change over time--money, recognition, family or spirituality could each be paramount at different life stages.

Visualize. Develop a vision of law practice that is congruent with your core values. It becomes the lens through which options can be evaluated. The vision identifies the type of work you intend to do, for whom and, most importantly, why you will do it (your purpose).

Plan. Write a plan for realization of the vision. Divide it into sub-parts, with deadlines for completion. It is a roadmap for achieving your goals. Revisit and refine it as circumstances change.

Act. Boldly work your plan. In the words of Goethe, "Boldness has genius, power and magic in it." Build in accountability through progress reports to mentors, coaches or trusted friends. Even small steps in the right direction often produce dramatic results.

Overcome Resistance. You will inevitably encounter obstacles in the form of internal resistance (fear, self-doubt) and external resistance (from colleagues, critics). Identify helpful resources, such as spiritual practices, support groups or learning new skills, and use them aggressively to push through the resistance. Fight for yourself with the same zeal with which you fight for clients.

Negotiate. Sometimes it is not possible or appropriate to "overcome" resistance, especially when it comes from personal or professional systems (family, law partners, clients, judges). Negotiation can result in workable compromises (For example, McShane once persuaded a busy judge to allow him regular meditation time during a lengthy trial).

Picture the Benefits. Commitment to the vision will wane in the face of resistance unless a compelling picture of the transformed law practice is maintained. List the benefits and keep the list close. Refer to it during periods of fear, doubt or criticism so you will continue to advocate for your dreams.

Law That Heals by Barbara Stahura

Gretchen Duhaime — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 16:41:35 GMT

First published in Science of Mind, Sept. 2000. Reprinted with permission of the author. Barbara Stahura; stahura@earthlink.net

William van Zyverden was such a big fan of the “Perry Mason” television show when he was a kid that it inspired him to become a lawyer. Yet when he finally did graduate from law school, he knew he could not practice in the traditional way that encourages enmity and disempowerment. He saw how participants in that kind of system do not truly win if they lose their honor and dignity in the process. Furthermore, he knew that traditional law, based as it is on the notion of separateness, actively discourages healing.

So he practices holistic law, which meshes with his personal belief in individual responsibility within the Unity of all things. Holistic law encourages unity through compassion and forgiveness, not the separation that comes with punishment and blame. Understanding that nothing happens out of context, he helps his clients examine the process that brought them into contact with the legal system. He also encourages them to see the other side of the story -- a process that often opens their hearts to the suffering of the other people involved, and thus to forgiveness and a sense of peace.

He is the founder of International Alliance of Holistic lawyers, headquartered in his Holistic Justice Center in Middlebury, Vermont. The alliance currently has about 700 members around the world.

Science of Mind: What is holistic law?

William van Zyverden: It means a lot of things to a lot of different people, and that’s the beauty of it. The easiest way is to have people embrace the concept of holistic medicine. You don’t have cancer, you’ve developed cancer. It didn’t come out of context. Your lifestyle or your whole being has somehow embraced this cancer.

The same is true of internal conflict. No one does anything that upsets you. Something happens, and you’re upset about it. It’s internally generated. So as a holistic lawyer, I ask, “Why you? What is this doing for you?” From a spiritual point of view, I would say, “What is the opportunity for you here? Why has this come into your life? What are you here to learn?”

Everything happens in context. Nothing happens that didn’t come from a past that compelled someone to be where they are in the present and is also launching them into places in the future that are fixed and known. Not that we’re predestined, but your past really conspires to place you where you are. You’ve had a certain education and you tend to think along the lines that you were trained by, not along the lines that you know nothing about. So you’re more likely to be where you are than someplace else.

Other people would say holistic law is holy, spiritual, not just a horizontal continuum but a vertical continuum, and that’s fine.

What do you mean by a vertical continuum?

Horizontal is the one I just described. A timeline. But the vertical is that we are body, mind, spirit, and emotions. We are all those things. Looking at just the facts of the person is not enough. We really need to understand the emotions, the spirituality, and the intellect, versus how that interplays with the body. We are one life, and it’s now time to say no, there is no separation.

Isn’t the whole concept of holistic law too idealistic for most people?

No. The litigiousness or the non-idealistic part of our world is just a part of our world. Everyone has feelings and worries and stress, and that emotional part is so wonderful. It gets jealous and envious and thinks the only way out is to blame or punish someone, or sue somebody. But it’s a very small part of each individual. You can talk to people who are suing others, and ask them about their family, and they go, “Yeah, family’s great.” Ninety-nine percent of their life is non-suing.

When people are angry, they feel like being defensive is the only way out. But in their calmer, more relaxed times, they can see the options and the real plus in being compassionate and working things out. Someone who sues sees only one side or one way out. I think lawyers could help by challenging their clients and saying there is another valid side to this argument. I do it all the time. When someone comes to me and says, “I want to sue X,” I ask why. They explain it, and I say, “Tell me the other side. If you were the other person, what would you be feeling? What’s going on in your life? What are the possible reasons why you think you’re right?” I actually have them sit in a different chair because it gets them out of their place. It’s amazing to see how easily they can see there really are two sides.

Traditional law operates through adversarial disempowerment. Would you explain that?

The traditional adversarial system separates you from all other people, and so it really disempowers you. Once you feel like you’re right and everyone else is wrong, you have an us-them attitude, a survivalist attitude. It allows you to say someone is bad. It really plays into your ignorance. It takes you to those places where you’re mean and angry and jealous. You don’t want to be on the other side of someone carrying those attributes around. It’s very disempowering.

Can holistic law and traditional law coexist?

One of the nice things about holistic law is that it includes traditional law. It is the whole, and it contains the traditional approach as one option among many.

Holistic law looks at the shared interests of the parties and so is based on the metaphysical concept of wholeness and oneness. Can people who don’t have a metaphysical or spiritual outlook accept the holistic approach to law?

Of course. Again, we’ll go back to the whole. Traditional law depends on the illusion of separate interests. The anecdote I like to use is that two kids on the playground are fighting over an orange. The teacher says, “I’ll solve this” and cuts the orange in half and gives each kid a half. They’re still crying. She says, “Now what?” And the one kid says, “I wanted the seeds,” and the other one says, “I wanted the juice.”

That’s what holistic law points out. We think our interests are the same and that we are fighting over one thing. But when you start looking at underlying interests, you find that really what we’re fighting for is mutually exclusive and we can both get what we really want. We just don’t have a system that searches that deeply.

You ask your clients up front if they can take losing in the eyes of the world if it means they retain their dignity. Why is such a question necessary?

Because in the holistic view, losing in the short run may mean winning in the long run. But if you’re short-sighted, you don’t see that. If the client can allow a loss being better for them in the long run, even if they can’t understand it now or see it, they need to be able to answer that question to be able to release attachment to the outcome.

Now we get into a more metaphysical, spiritual point of view, saying that everything in the flow happens for the best. And the flow may mean you have to lose now in order to learn a much bigger lesson. And I’ve been through that a lot, both for myself and with clients.

One example is, you might need to feel like what it’s like to be in someone else’s shoes or to be humiliated in order to really understand what it’s like so you don’t do it again or don’t wind up on the other side.

I was sued once, and I was so angry that this client felt I had done something wrong. I had to have a lawyer and the other side had a lawyer, and it got really messy. I got physically sick through the process.

I ended up losing on a legal technicality that we just couldn’t overcome with the judge, and I finished that saying, gosh, I now know what it’s like being a client going through that. And I never knew before.

When I hear clients talk about losing sleep or how horrible it is, my old self would have said, “Don’t worry about it. It will work out in the long run, or losing is winning.” I had these great words of wisdom, which found no seat in the person’s soul because I wasn’t coming from experience. But now I share my experience about how terrible this felt, that I got physically sick, and clients nod their head, and the bond between us is much deeper than if I’d never gone through that myself.

Can holistic law work in criminal as well as civil cases?

Go back to the first question and my answer that everything happens in context. In every criminal case that I handle, I sit with my clients for two to three hours just talking about their life history. It’s amazing what learning and awakening they go through understanding how they got there. That this just didn’t happen, that this is a pattern throughout their lives. They’ve been able to see for the first time that their actions had a negative affect on other people. Instead of striking inward, which they’ve been doing and really beating themselves up from the inside, they strike out, which harms other people. But their focus is so selfish, they don’t recognize their impact on anybody else.

I’ve had conversations with thieves and aggravated assaults and people who have threatened violence and stalkers, and they don’t see their victims as human beings. And people who steal don’t see it as stealing from another person. The victims, on the other hand, take it personally. They have the symbiotic story on the other side.

One of the great things happening in criminal law now is that we are looking at the reparative -- the repairing -- rather than punishing. If the victim and offender meet and talk, they can learn that this wasn't done to anyone personally. They both heal as a result. The offender learns other ways to express the explosion that happens. It changes their lives forever, too. They understand that nothing happens in any one person’s life that doesn’t affect the whole of society. If that’s too metaphysical or spiritual, look at it as a community or family. There isn’t anything that you can say, do, or even think that doesn’t affect everyone around you.

Doesn’t holistic law take the position that blame shouldn’t be an issue?

We speak less of blame because blames implies right and wrong. Responsibility implies there are consequences to be accepted and played out. For every action there’s a reaction, but not necessarily one that people can blame you for. You did something that has consequences, and that can be your way of learning.

The International Alliance of Holistic Lawyers has a logo of Thema, which is the goddess of justice, and she’s holding up one scale and not two because justice is really about the individual and not about fairness or equanimity among many. It’s really the individual’s journey of taking responsibility and accepting the consequences, playing them through, learning the lessons, and moving on.

If we have been in a dispute and I don’t blame you, does that mean I forgive you?

They are so close. In order to not blame someone, you have to forgive yourself, and you can’t forgive anybody else until you’ve forgiven yourself. When you release judgment, you also see the greater picture. Your whole mindset changes. What you do and how you do it changes.

So, once you’ve stopped blaming someone else for your problems, you understand that you created your own problems. And you wind up embracing other people.

If you believe in blame, you believe there is both a victim and an offender. If you believe in forgiveness, you see that both of you are victims and offenders. And there were actions and reactions and consequences that both of you will play out, or not. It’s all up to you.

You have said that the bottom line on holistic law is that it allows people to be part of the solution instead of exacerbating the problem. How does that work?

Holistic law challenges the client to reveal who they are, if only to the lawyer. Law is the natural relationship between one event and the next. It’s why things happen. Things happen lawfully, not outside the natural occurrence. Like gravity. You let go of something and it drops to the ground. This is lawful activity. Once people realize that things are happening in sequence and that nothing is happening out of context.... A client says, “My life turned upside down today because of....” I say, “You think it only started last night? Take me back 20 years and let’s find the seed. Or five years ago or last week.”

You believe that holistic law wins all the time in the spiritual sense. Please explain that.

In a spiritual sense, there is no winning and losing. The soul learns regardless. It doesn’t care. It puts you in a situation and says, “What’s all this about?” Metaphysically or spiritually, you’re here for a purpose, to learn things, and you learn them and then you go on.

When you see something you want to do, or want to have, or want to experience, that becomes the next step in your life. Great! In order to take a step to the right, you have to refrain from stepping to the left. And you can never step that step again. In order to do something, you have to give something else up.

Our purpose here is always to discover who we are this time and find out what we’re doing. And when we fulfill that, we fulfill society. I don’t think our purpose is to be destructive. I think we go there because we are self-destructive, we are not doing what we’re called to do. I don’t think any of us is called here to be a murderer or to harm anybody else in any way. I think we do it out of our free will because we’re not willing to listen.

Holistic law is scary for some people because the real message here is taking responsibility for yourself and looking in rather than looking out. It’s very simple, but it’s very scary