From Chapter Eleven: THE New Client

Here we stand, confronted by insurmountable opportunities.

- Pogo Possum

Clients are changing.And the ways in which they are changing may represent new opportunities for lawyers who are sensitive to the imperatives of the inner life.

One client of an East Coast intellectual property lawyer-an inventor-never visits the lawyer without meditating first in the park across the street from the office. This fascinates the lawyer, who has never met a client like him: his purpose never seems to be to win, and instead he appears to be involved in some other kind of game having to do with deeper concerns, some of which he explains, some of which he doesn't. And although he comes to the lawyer for advice, he makes it very clear that he sees him as a partner.

A Los Angeles woman seeking a divorce impressed her lawyer when she insisted she wanted to take the high road and ask for nothing but child support-even though she had ample evidence to prove that her husband had physically abused her. A practitioner of both martial arts and meditation, she felt herself to be on a spiritual path that obligated her to "bring more love and less rancor into the world."

A family lawyer in Massachusetts has seen a surge in interest in incorporating rituals into her work. When marriages end, for example, clients sometimes ask her to say some words, or a prayer, to acknowledge the significance of the moment.

A New Jersey architect interviewed five different lawyers after he lost most of the function in his left hand in an accident on a job site. He wanted to talk about what would be fair and just in terms of a settlement with the contractor. He was shocked to find that every lawyer he spoke to became bellicose. Each one promised to go after the man tooth and nail, even though the architect had never had a cross word with him during a ten-year working relationship. Stunned by their apparent lack of concern for what made sense to him and would jibe with his personal ethics and values, he found himself frustrated and bewildered.

And Cheryl Conner, associate director of clinical programs at Suffolk University Law School, was deluged with phone calls after she was featured in a Boston Herald article on holistic lawyering and its goals. "These were people involved in litigation looking for ways to understand and find meaning in the fact that they had a conflict in their lives," she recalls, "and asking for advice on how to coach their lawyers to make it more meaningful spiritually."

Conner may have run into the tip of a very important iceberg. In his 1996 Integral Culture Survey: A Study of the Emergence of Transformational Values in America, sociologist/urban planner Paul H. Ray identified a growing subculture in America that he calls the "Cultural Creatives." He estimates their numbers at 23.6 percent of the population, or 44 million people. Characteristics of the group include high levels of education, a median income of $47,500, and a median age of forty-two. They are seriously concerned with psychology, spiritual life, self-actualization, and self-expression. Values in which Cultural Creatives scored high (compared with "Heartlanders" and "Modernists"--the two other significant subcultures Ray identified) included "want to rebuild neighborhoods/community" (92 percent), "see nature as sacred" (85 percent), "believe in ecological sustainability" (83 percent), and "believe in voluntary simplicity" (79 percent). These are people, Ray writes, "open to innovation in the service of their spiritual values."

It's safe to say a hefty percentage of those 44 million people are going to seek legal help some day. When they do, they will bring a different consciousness to it-suggesting that lawyers may soon have more room than they have now to try new ways of doing things. In other words, it is likely that this large (and growing) subculture, which embraces "alternative" or "progressive" values, will prefer lawyers whose approach is consistent with their own worldview.

That was certainly true of Judi Neal, a litigant whose "cultural creative" values came smack up against some very unspiritual opponents and, with the help of her lawyers, stood their ground.

(Chapter includes the story of Judi Neal's prolonged litigation, a profile of an in-house lawyer and suggestions for how to make collaborations with clients more meaningful and satisfying.)