From Chapter Nine: THE Service Practice

[Halpert] had found his home. Having spent years feeling disconnected from a sense of authenticity in his work, he had tapped into a source of passion and energy that made everything seem possible. "I found that this is where I belonged, helping injured people put their lives together again. I got satisfaction from that like never before."

The question he had been asking, the one that was off the mark and had grown out of his parents' emphasis on money and power, was this: What can the law do for me? Suddenly he realized that the question that enlivened and inspired him was quite a different one: How can I use the law to serve my clients, to help them regain their self-esteem and happiness? "I've learned that the less time I spend focusing on me and the more time I spend focusing on my clients, the happier I become. It's ironic, really. By focusing on healing clients from their disasters, I have gotten the things my parents said I'd get by focusing on myself."

You do not have to work for the poor in order to serve; suffering is everywhere--from skid row to the gleaming high-rises of corporate America--and where there is suffering and need, there is an opportunity to come alive in service. All of us, says meditation teacher and psychotherapist Jack Kornfield, have a "deep longing to give--to give to the earth, to give to others, to give to society." Even in people who don't give, that longing is just waiting to be discovered; failing to find a way to give is "one of the worst human sufferings," he says.

Legal work can honor that impulse, or impede it. When it thwarts the impulse, by marginalizing its importance or failing even to acknowledge its role in the profession (outside of strictly defined pro bono activities), it diminishes the practice.

Halpert is familiar with this diminishment. He recalls the primary message he got in law school, regarding clients: Don't get too involved with them lest it compromise your objectivity. Today he is the senior partner at a four-lawyer personal injury firm in Kalamazoo. Where P.I. lawyers in the area typically have 120 to 150 cases open at a time, each of the partners at Halpert, Weston, Wuori & Sawusch, P.C., handles no more than 20. That's so they can spend a lot of time with their clients-a commitment that often extends for months or even years after a judgment is rendered or a settlement has been reached. "The first obligation of a lawyer with a therapeutic bent," Halpert says, "is to ask the question 'What is in this client's best interest toward peace and happiness and living a meaningful life?'" For Halpert and his partners, answering that question has entailed a level of personal involvement with clients that might seem strange to other lawyers. "Our mission," says Halpert, "is to take care of injured people and help them recover from their accidents--physically, emotionally, psychologically, and financially in a way that allows us to stay in business."