From Chapter Seven: THE Healing Practice

Here and there, among lawyers looking for a vision to refocus what their role in society ought to be, one idea is inching to the fore--and it is one that is compatible with other possible roles, although, if taken seriously it would transform them all. It is the idea of the lawyer as healer. . . .

Before the advent of self-help books, and before we took to psychotherapy en masse, people found healing through telling their stories to others, and by listening to the stories that came back. When those stories are real--when they tell who we are, not just what we've achieved--they speak the truth about us. The truest stories offer more than meaning. They let us touch others, help to dissolve our sense of separation and find our rightful place in the world. They also teach, inspire, and heal. . . .

Other than medicine and the clergy, no profession can compare to the law in the narrative richness it offers. The human pageant comes daily through the office door. Clients arrive with troubled minds, in times of need, times of pain and crisis-those very times when the truest stories are closest to the surface, as is the need for healing. . . .

A client's truth, conveyed through his story, has power. If you are open to it, it can touch your heart and guide you in choosing the most appropriate course of action in a case. When you overlook that magic, you are letting your idea of what a lawyer should be diminish what you really are, and you cut yourself off from an essential source of sustenance and knowledge.

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From Adversary to Healer

It used to be that one of the great things about being a lawyer was the number of roles you could play in your clients' lives. You could be a counselor, a trusted adviser, a problem solver, or even a peacemaker. In theory, you still can. The reality, however, is somewhat different: the lawyer as zealous advocate has eclipsed all the other possible roles, and what was once thought of as legal ethics is now almost entirely adversarial ethics. Clearly, there are times when advocating on behalf of a client in an adversarial forum is a great and noble role for a lawyer to play, but it is crucial that it not become the only role.

While alternative dispute resolution has made encouraging inroads over the last twenty years, the adversarial system continues to hover above ADR like an elephant over a chipmunk. Fortunately, a growing number of lawyers are chafing under the adversarial harness, feeling that it offers an impoverished view both of the legal system and of human nature. Being ill at ease with making it the default approach to solving disputes, they are looking for ways to bring other dimensions of reality--and other methodologies--into the process. Their goal is to work for a greater good, not for the narrow and often Pyrrhic victories that an unfettered adversarial impulse so frequently brings about.

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Opportunities to expand awareness and to heal are everywhere in the law: in a client's subtle hints that she really wants a reason to do the right thing, the less hurtful thing, in a dispute; in the behavior of the lawyer on the other side, whose apoplectic rage hides a need to escape from a process that has become a prison; in the elegance and simplicity of a solution locked inside the head of a young associate, who is too frightened to share it with her supervising partner; and in the emotional turmoil of a client who has come in for a will and who obviously needs to talk about his painful estrangement from his children. . . .

Once you have established healing as your goal, you can move clients in that direction in a number of ways. One very simple thing to keep in mind, though, is a lesson that the medical profession has only recently begun to learn, now that research can be called upon to verify it: the mere presence of a physician tends to have a healing influence on sick patients. What if you were to take this into consideration in the moments before you meet with each client? What if, realizing that your very presence can have either a salutary or a corrosive effect, you were to begin the interaction ready to use your best approximation of a good bedside manner?

(Chapter includes stories of lawyers as healers and tips/suggestions on how to practice law in a healing way)