From Chapter Twelve: Legal Education at the Threshold

David Hall is [a] voice for change. The former dean of Northeastern University's School of Law, he worries about an educational experience that asks students to leave behind their deepest values and beliefs as the price of earning a law degree. He believes it is time for lawyers to reclaim the "higher ground" of soul and spirit--abandoned, he says, to "mystics and skeptics"--and help others discover it for the first time. "The cure to what ails us as a profession is in this area, lying dormant inside so many of the people we train and so many of the lawyers engaged in practice," he says.

In 1997, Hall, along with John Hamilton, managing partner of Boston's 360-lawyer Hale and Dorr, began a collaboration designed to answer a question that they found especially compelling: How can we start a conversation about what it means to be a lawyer that gets to the very heart of what we, as human beings, are here to do as practitioners?

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Another experiment in bringing a deeper awareness to the study of law takes place every semester at Suffolk University School of Law, amid a row of eighteenth-century brownstones a block behind the Massachusetts State House in Boston. There, Cheryl Conner, a Harvard-trained former federal prosecutor, offers a course called "The Reflective Lawyer: Peace Training for Lawyers."

The course is offered as a companion seminar for students in Suffolk's clinical program, a place to go with the thoughts and feelings that arise in the course of their work at, say, children's legal services, the U.S. Attorney's Office, or the state legislature.

Students tend to enroll in the class because they feel disenfranchised from the narrow focus of legal education on doctrine. The course gives them a place to talk about values and express their fears. Common among them: that the practice of law will crush their souls, cause them to betray themselves, or make them feel burned-out and angry.

"They're delighted to have a place to talk about their values in law school," Conner says. She provides them with that, and with something more--a secular presentation of the Buddhist approach to conflict resolution. She also gives them tools such as meditation and visualization to relieve stress and focus awareness. And she asks them to look into their own pasts, at whatever "wisdom traditions" they may have grown up with, for ways to conceptualize--and then behave in--challenging situations.

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Mapping New Terrain

Both the Northeastern/Hale and Dorr program and Cheryl Conner's innovative class at Suffolk are helping to expand the traditional law school map. Conner's student Tom Kaplanes says he's become aware of brand-new pathways: "Instead of going down route 1, you realize you can go down the back roads and see what you've been missing." For the seasoned pros involved in the Northeastern program, that lesson was equally compelling, and all have vowed to take their bearings at regular intervals to make sure that the path they're on is still taking them where they truly want to go.

Although the Northeastern and Suffolk ventures are at the cutting edge in emphasizing personal growth and spirituality in legal academia, other schools are beginning to move in a similar direction, all of them looking to flesh out and integrate certain notions that have for too long been neglected, such as:

• Real fulfillment in law comes not only from mastering the law itself but also from establishing deep connections with colleagues and clients.
• It is essential to find ways to balance the "doing" life of the lawyer with the "being" experiences that all people need; vitality, creativity, and satisfaction require this balance.
• Great satisfaction comes from breaking out of the box of business-as-usual, making new connections, and tapping into sources of creativity and love that ultimately must underlie real fulfillment in any profession.
• Regular reflection is essential, and without it, it is not possible to stay on course.