idealawg

Interview of Scott Rogers: Mindfulness in the law

Today I am talking with Scott Rogers, a Florida-based lawyer who trains other lawyers, as well as law students, in meditation and mindfulness.  Scott, thanks very much for agreeing to participate in my series of interviews of thinkers and practitioners who have ideas that are valuable for the legal profession. The question I typically lead with is one asking people how they were drawn to their areas of expertise. I like to hear their stories.

So, Scott, let me start by asking how you got interested in mindfulness and meditation?

My interest in mindfulness goes back about 20 years when I first explored formal meditative practice.  My wife, Pam, had signed us up to learn transcendental meditation from a wonderful member of the law school faculty who had learned in India many years earlier.  I was taken with the experience, both in terms of its impact on my ability to focus and the subtle ways it shaped my moment-to-moment sense of things. I began to read a great deal about meditation and continued to practice. 

My readings introduced me to mindfulness practice and I began to hone in on this kind of practice.  It supported me through a terrific ride in law school, a series of judicial clerkships and finally a commercial litigation practice with White & Case.   With the marriage moving along and babies being born, mindfulness meditation became an important part of my life.  I think it allowed me to perform well at work and be present when I was home, and maintain perspective on the interplay of work, family, and meaning in life.

Both while clerking for Judge Rosemary Barkett and then practicing with White & Case, I was happy to share and discuss mindfulness with my colleagues.  I was always struck by their genuine interest in the subject.  And I am a big believer of “everyone in their own time." Here were people interested in this work, but finding themselves and their life just not conducive to incorporating a mindfulness practice.  I wished it were different—that at least there was a way for them to taste it and to know what I was talking about.

At this stage in my practice, the formal and informal were coming together. As I was interacting with a lot of parents and we were all sharing stories of the challenges of parenthood, I began to develop an approach to teaching mindfulness to parents, using the child as a primary object of awareness or as a cue to turn inward.   That led to the book Mindful Parenting: Verses, Visualization and Meditations for a More Joyful Life.

The success of this approach with parents naturally extended to the law.  Why not use that same methodology to develop a program for lawyers?   But instead of imagery of a child, I would use imagery of the law and legal terms. Thus was born Jurisight®.

Interesting! Tell me more about using legal terminology to teach lawyers about mindfulness.

What was most exciting to me was that the law lent itself so naturally to this method of teaching.  I did not use wordplay just to be clever.  It was as if legal terminology and the

Interview of Diane F. Wyzga, RN, JD: Storytelling in the practice of law

Diane F. Wyzga is an attorney, a nurse, and a professionally trained storyteller. She works as both a trial consultant and a communications coach to lawyers. Her company, Lightning Rod Communications, is based in San Clemente, California. A motto at her Web site: "The difference between the right word and almost right word is like the difference between lightning and lightning bug." Read on to see the many right words  Diane uses in this interview

Diane, thanks very much for agreeing to participate in my series of interviews of thinkers and practitioners who have ideas that are valuable for the legal profession. Let's get started. The question I typically lead with because I Like to hear how people were drawn to their expertise is . . .

How did you get interested in storytelling in the law? What's the story behind your coming to have this expertise?

Once upon a time, long long ago & far far away in a book and coffee shop in Pacific Grove, CA a book fell off a shelf.  I picked it up.  The year was 1994.  The book was a 20th anniversary edition of best-loved stories told at the Jonesborough, TN story festival.  I read a story. I said: I can do this.  At the time I had no clue how I would use storytelling; I only knew I was a storyteller.  And time would have to take care of the rest.

I joined the local storytelling guild and the National Storytellers Network, traveled to conferences, workshops and festivals, met other storytellers, got mentors, learned stories and found venues to tell them. I told stories at the Different Drummer Bookstore (famous as the only gay and lesbian bookstore in Laguna Beach, CA), for every Rotary within a 50 mile radius of my home, for women’s groups and incest survivor groups, at holiday parties and rodeos, at local hospitals, environmental rallies, grammar schools, colleges and universities, prisons and juvenile halls. Some gigs paid. Most did not.

In time I built up a portfolio of keeper stories. In time I dared to write my own stories, and tell them. Then I went for the big time: I applied to join the National Speakers Association as a professional member. I was accepted. I thought I was on my way to the big time of national speaking gigs. The Universe had other ideas.

I applied to teach a college level course on storytelling at Learning Tree University. Two of my students were long-time practicing lawyers. They came to the course because they wanted to enhance their advocacy and presentation skills. What could I teach a lawyer about storytelling? Robert McKee had the answer:

Storytelling is the art of expressing meaningful change in the life situation of a character in terms of values to which the listener reacts with emotion.

This is what lawyers do all the time! I just needed to overcome law school’s linear analytical training that says he who dies with the most facts, wins. And show lawyers how we listen to stories.

I began teaching that the factfinder listener energetically connives and conspires with the attorney-storyteller because they want to believe the story and do something which matters. In the grip of a heartfelt story artfully told, the factfinder listener’s mind is fully engaged creating a parallel world of social judgment based on their world views and experiences. Now the attorney and factfinder are one: working in concert in a cooperative enterprise considering options, possibilities and outcomes. As of a recent verdict in June, I have 11.11 million reasons why I continue to believe that a heartfelt story artfully told using language with power, passion and precision will engage your jury every single time.

Whether we win or lose, the overall task of any lawyer is to speak for those who cannot. Even when the client loses the case, I believe that the saving grace is this: the lawyer has given the client a singular opportunity to tell their story and be heard. As Maya Angelou reminds us, "There is no greater burden than carrying an untold story."

To reinforce the notion of what lawyers truly accomplish in their day-to-day struggle to find and tell the stories of truth surrounding their clients, I'd like to offer this thought:

The stranger who tells our stories when we cannot speak not only awakens our spirits and hearts but also shows our humanity -- which others want to forget -- and in doing so becomes family.[Mende Proverb, Sierra Leone]

I am intrigued by what you say about overcoming law school's training. Here's a three-part question for you on that topic; I am very much looking forward to hearing more. (1) Would you describe how you do that? (2) Why it is important? (3) What's wrong with facts?

Interview of Mohammadreza Hojat on the empathy of service professionals

Today I am talking with Dr. Mohammadreza Hojat, professor of psychiatry and human behavior at Jefferson Medical College and author of the new book Empathy in Patient Care: Antecedents, Development, Measurement, and Outcomes. Hojat, thanks very much for agreeing to participate in my series of interviews of thinkers and practitioners who have ideas that are valuable for the legal profession.

How did you come to be interested in empathy in the medical profession? I always find the story behind the expertise an intriguing place to start.

As a psychologist by academic training, I was curious about why people behave as they do in making or breaking human connections.  I started to engage in medical education research more than two decades ago with this question in mind: How can patient-doctor connection, as a mini social support system, lead to positive clinical outcomes?

I became convinced that the alleviation of human suffering would flourish by enhancing empathic engagement in the caregiver-care receiver relationships.  This is true in medicine as well as in any other public service profession that requires one-to-one relationship, including legal services.

In addition, changes that evolved in the current market-driven health care system that are detrimental to patient-physician relationships, physicians attention to financial incentives, and cost containment regulations formulated by health insurance companies, and their rippling effects on medical education prompted me to empirical research of empathy in medical education and patient care.  This research led to the publication of my book: Empathy in Patient Care: Antecedents, Development, Measurement, and Outcomes.

Thank you. I certainly appreciate what you tell us about the role of empathy both in today's health care system with its many competing tensions and in the alleviation of human suffering. How do you define empathy in the context of patient care?

Interview of Tojo Thatchenkery on appreciative intelligence in the practice of law

Today I am talking with Dr. Tojo Thatchenkery, professor of organizational learning at George Mason University and author of the new book Appreciative Intelligence: Seeing the Mighty Oak in the Acorn. Tojo, thanks very much for agreeing to participate in my series of interviews of thinkers and practitioners who have ideas that are valuable for the legal profession. Carol Metzker, the co-author of your new book, was interviewed here a few months ago. I am grateful to be able to hear the thoughts of each of you on how appreciative intelligence applies to lawyers.

In November, you and I met with Mark Beese and Julie Fleming Brown. I want to start this interview by asking you to explain two concepts you described at the get-together: opportunity recognition and entrepreneurial cognition. As we discussed, entrepreneurial skills are often important and beneficial for lawyers. What are these concepts and how do they relate to appreciative intelligence?

Thank you, Stephanie. Opportunity recognition is the core of entrepreneurship. The common definition of entrepreneurship says that it involves recognizing an opportunity to create something new. This "new" is defined very broadly- creating new products or services, identifying a new market or niche, or a new way of improving production or quality- all these may come under the "new." According to professors Robert Baron and Scott Shane, "opportunity" in the entrepreneurial context is the potential to create something new because changes in the environment- social, economic, political, or cultural- have created a fertile climate for it. Someone must recognize it. That's all.

But not everyone has the capacity to recognize the gradual or sudden emergence of these opportunities. The question then is why do some entrepreneurs (but not others) recognize opportunities for new products and/or services that are eventually brought to market successfully? In other words, why are some entrepreneurs more successful than others?

This is where I believe appreciative intelligence comes in. University of Victoria researcher Ron Mitchell and team have shown that entrepreneurs think differently, both with respect to the content of their thoughts and the processes they employ.  Another researcher Norris Krueger has looked at entrepreneurial intentions, the cognitive state that precedes the decision to act. A successful entrepreneur is able to recognize emerging opportunities because she is processing information differently than most other people. She thinks outside the box, which takes me to the concept of entrepreneurial cognition. So you can see that the two concepts are inter-related.    

My research on appreciative intelligence has shown that the Silicon Valley entrepreneurs thought differently by intentionally reframing market signs and opportunities. As you know, the ability to reframe is an important aspect of appreciative intelligence. So what I am doing is a making a link between entrepreneurial cognition and opportunity recognition.

Researchers have been trying to identify the cognitive variables behind opportunity recognition. Ron Mitchell who I mentioned earlier had focused on the specific cognitions demonstrated by entrepreneurs and saw evidences of them possessing better developed cognitive scripts for various business development and execution contexts. The Indian American IT entrepreneurs I had studied showed a great deal of persistence and conviction that their actions mattered. They also showed a high degree of comfort with ambiguity or uncertainty and had irrepressible resilience, all qualities described in the book Appreciative Intelligence you have referred in your question.

Appreciative intelligence has three components: the ability to reframe, to appreciate the positive, and to see how the future unfolds from the present. The last one is closely linked to cognition. My hunch is that people with higher appreciative intelligence will have different types of social cognitions than people with a lower level of it. Stated differently, the presence of appreciative intelligence may be a contributing factor behind the sharp or enhanced state of entrepreneurial cognitions which in turn allow successful entrepreneurs to recognize opportunities.

Let me pause here and ask you if I have adequately responded to your question.

Yes, you have. Very, very intriguing, Tojo. Thank you. I want to look at the other end of the continuum to satisfy my curiosity and that of some readers. Is there something akin to depreciative intelligence? The ability to see what is wrong with a situation or what could go wrong? I ask because the ability to foresee all the possible problems is a skill we as lawyers must have. How would that relate to appreciative intelligence? Can they co-exist? I am looking forward to hearing your thoughts on this.

I know I jokingly suggested a depreciative intelligence (DI) during our last meeting!  Within the intelligence literature, pattern recognition is seen an important aspect of general intelligence (what we call the IQ). Ability to recognize what could go wrong is a type of pattern recognition a lawyer may develop after years of practice. They could anticipate how various legal strategies may unfold or play out, then connect the dots and predict what might go wrong. We don't have enough evidence to suggest that this would be a new type of intelligence.

Secondly, it is not the figure-out-what's-wrong ability that eventually helps lawyers succeed. Once they know what might go wrong, they need to figure out what might go right. A lawyer is focused on winning the case, not losing it. So, I would argue that sorting out what could go wrong is a step before determining what might go right. It is a healthy step one or prerequisite. But, a lawyer with an ability for out-shining others in step one only won't succeed in the long run.

If there were a test for "depreciative intelligence," most lawyers will do well since this is a required ability and often the most commonly used. It will be tough to be a lawyer without it, just like it will be hard to be a medical doctor if you don't have the ability to diagnose a patient. But what makes great doctors is not normally the ability for diagnosis but prognosis. Can a doctor identify the right treatment regime so that he or she can create a process of recovery and healing for the patient? I think lawyers are similar in that respect. What makes great lawyers is the ability to recognize new legal strategies or reframe existing ones, and learn how the future unfolds from the present-, all elements of appreciative intelligence.

In short, I recognize the importance of figuring out what may go wrong but believe that the more important next step of identifying what will go right is what may help lawyers succeed.

Thank you, Tojo. You are saying that the real leaders, the people who are most successful, balance the knowledge of what can go wrong with the idea of potential or what can go right. Maybe more than balance: the idea of the potential is paramount and the predictions about what can go wrong are a subset of the potential. One serves the other.

I would imagine a lawyer can begin to create more Appreciative Intelligence by considering each case with a deliberate inventory of what could go wrong AND what could go right. The more he or she does this the more the Appreciative Intelligence will grow until it becomes second nature. I know your book has tips for increasing AI. Can you tell us another method that readers could immediately use?

Not on the same legal writing page: George Gopen of Duke responds to Wayne Schiess of University of Texas

Wayne C. Schiess recently commented on my Interview of Dr. George D. Gopen: WRITING FROM A LEGAL PERSPECTIVE (linked to from the (new) legal writer and Building Rapport). Dr. Gopen was kind enough to respond to these comments. (I have placed Schiess's comments in bold italics before Gopen's responses.)

Gopen writes . . .

Mr. Schiess –

I admire everyone who is passionate about the teaching of writing.  Let me respond to your response.

Schiess: So does Dr. Gopen recommend the passive voice? The dry, deadening, lifeless passive voice that pervades legal writing?

This issue with the passive is, I think, of great importance to legal writing and any other kind of high-level professional writing.  We seem to have bought into the judgment that the passive is, as you put it, “dry, deadening, and lifeless,” without considering carefully enough what happens when the passive is used.  I’ve recently published a very short article on this in the trade journal called Law Practice. ("When to Use the Passive.”  Law Practice, Vol. 32 #6, September, 2006, 50-2.) 

When we use the passive, it results in our moving around the furniture of a sentence into different spots.  My rather unusual approach to handling sentences advises that we regularly should place certain kinds of information in certain specific structural locations.  This is based on the assumption (discovery? belief?) that most of the clues for the reader in the interpretive process come not from word choice but from structural location.  In other words, as readers, we know where to look for what.   

For example, we tend to read a sentence as being the story of whoever or whatever shows up as its grammatical subject.  So “Smith battered Jones” is the story of Smith, and “Jones was battered by Smith” is the story of Jones.  If you need to be telling the story of Jones, the passive is the easiest, sometimes best, sometimes only was to get Jones up front into the “whose story” position.  That structural location is crucial to your readers seeing the sentence as you want them to see it.  In comparison with the importance of that concern, worrying about “active vs. passive” seems almost frivolous.  There are a number of similarly crucial problems in communication that can be solved best by the passive, several of which are covered in that short article I mentioned above.

Readers of an English sentence tend to give significantly greater emphasis to the material located at the sentence’s moment of full syntactic closure.  Such closure is produced by a period, or by a properly used colon or semi-colon, but never by a comma.  Sometimes the only way to achieve this structural placement is by using the passive.  When that is the case, thank goodness we have the passive.  I don’t think it is possible to write sophisticated, high-level intellectual; English without a skillful control of the passive.  I’ve also recently published a short article on the “Stress position” – my name for that moment of full syntactic closure.  (“Stress This : How to Indicate to Your Reader the Most Important Words in a Sentence.” Law Practice, Vol, 32 #4, June, 2006, 50-2.)

There is no question in my mind, based on decades of consulting experience, that poor use of the Stress position is the single most pervasive and single most serious problem  in legal writing today.  ( I refer here only to English.  Other languages have different reader expectations and therefore different problems.)

Schiess: I disagree. Shorter is almost always better.

“Shorter is always better.”  I would agree that quite often when a sentence has been improved, it has also been shortened; but mere length means nothing by itself.  I often used to shorten sentences for my clients or students, only to discover that I had seriously misunderstood their intentions.  My revision was shorter and tighter -- and wrong.

Interview of Dr. George D. Gopen: WRITING FROM A LEGAL PERSPECTIVE

Every so often I post interviews with talented thinkers, authors and practitioners in which I ask them about their ideas of value to the legal profession. Today I am extremely pleased to bring you an interview of Dr. George Gopen. I have had the privilege of hiring Dr. Gopen to present several legal writing seminars in the past and have been delighted to see attendees' enthusiasm and and satisfaction. Because I know of no one else with a greater ability to teach lawyers, even those already good writers, to be better writers, I invited my old friend to answer some questions about this process he teaches so well.

idealawg: Thanks very much for being here at idealawg, George. I think the story of how you became a legal writing consultant would as interesting to many readers as it is to me so let's start there.

Gopen: I became a legal writing consultant by a series of accidents and instinctive career decisions.  I was an English major as an undergraduate.  Not knowing what to do with myself thereafter, I followed my father’s advice and went to law school – assuming, as he insisted, that my mental training there would stand me in good stead no matter what I wound up doing as a professional.  I loved the first year, but was unimpressed by my summer clerkship and not thrilled by the second year’s courses, which did not teach me anything new about the thinking process.

Noticing that Harvard had, at the time, a joint J.D.-M.A. program, in which any law student could opt to do a Masters in any Harvard department, I opted to do one in English. (Both the English Department and the Law School were so outraged that I would abuse the program by indulging in such frivolous pursuits, Harvard cancelled the program the next year.) I discovered I really wanted to be an English professor and convinced the English Department (by no means an easy task) that I should be allowed to stay fro the Ph.D.  I therefore did the two degrees simultaneously – 2 years law, 3 years both, and three years English. Somewhere in the fifth year, my mother began to tell people, “Most mothers pray their sons get into Harvard; me, I’m praying mine gets out.”

I was lucky enough to get a position in an English department, a feat accomplished by only 5 of the 47 who started the Ph.D. with me.  I secured a 3-years-and-out job at the University of Utah.  Accident #1: Upon my arrival, the new Director of Writing Programs, John Mueller, noticed my two degrees and asked me to create a course in “Advanced Composition for Pre-Law Students.”  I could find no such course being taught anywhere in the United States. I wrote 86 law schools, asking what writing programs they had – (the year was 1975) – and what their college offered on the undergraduate level. 80 wrote back, with various strains of frustration or despair over the writing skills of their students.

I invited the people who wrote the four best responses to Salt Lake City for four days to conference on what such an undergraduate course might encompass.  From that. I structured a course, taught it twice, published an article on the course ("A Course in Composition for Pre-Law Students."  Journal of Legal Education, 29 (1978), 222-231.); an article on what I had discovered about law school writing programs (then in their infancy) ("A Question of Cash and Credit: Writing Programs at Law Schools."  Journal of Contemporary Law, 3 (1977), 191-200.); and secured a contract with West Publishing for a textbook (Writing from a Legal Perspective).

When I returned to the job market in 1977-78, I found (much to my surprise) that I had credentialized myself as a Composition specialist.  (I was actually a Rhetorician, but did not discover that until 1984.)  In a job market still disastrous, where one or two job interviews was considered something of a triumph, I led the country (I believe) with 15.

Although there was suddenly a pressing need for composition instruction on the college level, there was not yet a “field” of Composition Studies; and no one else in the country had two Harvard graduate degrees and publications in Composition. Despite my new-found reputation, I knew next to nothing about teaching the English language. Neither, however, did many other people – if anyone.

I accepted a position as Director of Writing Programs at Loyola University of Chicago. When I got there, my first jobs were to find out (1) what was generally known about teaching the writing of English, and (2) how to do something better than that.

Accident #2: I moved into a nice condominium in Rogers Park, recently converted from its 50-year-old status as an apartment building. Only one other unit had been sold, to Dan Weinberg, the owner of a rare book shop that specialized in Abraham Lincoln. Dan and I became good friends immediately, since I was a rare book collector and both of us had sung in madrigal groups. Two months later, at his family’s Thanksgiving dinner table, Dan grew tired of listening to his-cousin-the-lawyer complain how badly the young people in his firm handled the English language. To bring an end to that strain of conversation, Dan suggested his cousin contact me. “He’s got a law degree and a Ph.D. in English from Harvard, and he directs the Writing Program at Loyola. If anyone knows how to do something about it, it’s him.”

And so I was offered my first consulting job. They handed me the single worst writer in the firm – a lovely but unconfident young man – and told me to spend as much time as I needed, every other Saturday, to bring him up to speed as a writer. I had no idea what to do, other than the few things I had developed in the Utah writing course. I worked with this energetic young man for several months and actually helped him make some progress. I do not recall how I managed to accomplish this. I worked for the firm for a total of 18 months. When, with a few successes under my belt, I suggested they  raise my pay from $60 an hour to $65, they fired me. 

The year was then 1980. I had been discovering all sorts of things – small, disconnected things – about the language. I was making progress. Several people that year suggested to me that I should get together with Professor Joe Williams of the University of Chicago. They suggested (1) that he and I sounded like we would agree on many things concerning the language and (2) that my ego was strong enough to deal with his.

Joe and I both attended CCCC (the writing professors’ conference) that year, which gave me the opportunity to meet and talk with him. We took to each other immediately and decided to form a small consulting firm. Eventually, Clearlines arose, consisting of Joe, Gregory Colomb, Frank Kinahan, and me. Joel Henning and Associates took us on and found for us employment with some of the most prominent law firms and corporations, and we were on our way. Our programs were usually four full days; each client would see each of us once.

Accident #3: In 1987 we were hired by a client, the #2 legal publishing firm, that refused to accept a writing consultant who did not have a J.D. For the first (and only) time, Clearlines sent just one person, me, to do the whole job. And what a job it was: 300 lawyers, all performing not as lawyers but as editors, in groups of 25, once a week for a full day. I commuted to New York every Thursday from the beginning of September into July, doing all four sessions of our program over and over.  This gave me an overview I had previously lacked.  We had accomplished a great deal as a group; but my doing this job, I finally discovered what it was we had accomplished.  (I will talk about that in a minute.)

Interview of Irene Sanders: STRATEGIC THINKING AND THE NEW SCIENCE

Today I am talking with Irene Sanders (more about Ms. Sanders), author of Strategic Thinking and the New Science: Planning in the Midst of Chaos, Complexity and Change. Irene, thanks so much for agreeing to be the third idealawg interview, a series in which I interview thinkers and practitioners about ideas that can be valuable to the legal profession.

Please tell us how you Irene Sanders got interested in the "new science." What drew you to it? What value did you see in it? And please tell us the story behind your book.

In the early 1980s I was working on the Hill in Washington, DC as a legislative assistant to U.S. Senator Sam Nunn and one of the things I noticed was that there were times when world events and national crises very quickly pushed other issues aside, restructured political alliances and rearranged budget priorities. Issues seem to emerge out of nowhere. And very few concerns were ever taken care of once and for all. In other words, what we thought would change almost never did, yet change was constant and often unexpected.

A few years later when I started a consulting firm focused on strategic thinking and planning, I encountered the same experience over and over with my clients and their organizations.

Now, I understand that there were two major reasons for this paradox of change. First, we did not understand the dynamics of change in realistic and coherent ways. And second, even though we talked about systems, our perspective was limited. We did not see the whole picture. What we were missing was an understanding about the dynamics of change in the big picture context in which our decisions were being made.

In 1989, a futurist friend gave me James Gleick's book, Chaos: Making a New Science, and urged me to read it as soon as possible. In that book I knew that I'd found what I'd been looking for--information about the emerging new science of change. In my mind, this new science provided the framework for a new and scientifically-based approach for developing foresight about the future.

The book came about as the result of an unexpected telephone call in 1994 from an editor in New York City. I was in the midst of preparing for a major presentation at a conference in Boston when I received the call asking if I had ever thought about writing a book. The editor who called me had received the conference brochure which piqued her interest. To say the least, I was caught off guard, but managed to respond coherently and positively to her interest in working with me on the development of a book.

Let's start with defining what we will be discussing. What is systems theory? Or should I be asking what is complexity science? Is there a difference?

Complexity can be defined as a situation where an increasing number of independent variables begin interacting in interdependent and unpredictable ways.Traffic, weather, the stock market, the United Nations or two dogs and a cat suddenly face-to-face through a hole in the fence are examples of complex systems.

In the last twenty-five years, rapid advances in high-speed computing and computer graphics have created a revolution in scientists' understanding of complex systems. In much the same way that the microscope assisted biologists and the telescope assisted astronomers, computer technology has given scientists powerful new tools of insight, making it possible for scientists to study the dynamics of systems that were once either hopelessly inaccessible or took years to understand.Complexity science represents a growing body of interdisciplinary knowledge about the structure, behavior and dynamics of change in a specific category of complex system known as complex adaptive systems. Most of the world is comprised of complex adaptive systems--open evolutionary systems such as a rain forest, a business, a society, our immune systems, the World Wide Web and the rapidly globalizing economy--where the components are strongly interrelated, self-organizing and dynamic.

Thanks, Irene. It sounds to me like knowledge of complex systems can be a real asset in law -- in representing clients, training lawyers, managing law firms, perhaps even client development. If most of the world is made up of complex adaptive systems, isn't one at a disadvantage in not understanding how they work? If so, what kinds of mistakes could a person make if they are not aware of how these systems work, say in an adversarial situation in the legal system (maybe akin to the dogs and a cat you mentioned above) or in managing a law firm?

Interview of Chuck Yoos: "There Is No Such Thing as Leadership"

Today I am talking with Dr. Charles Yoos. Chuck, thanks so much for agreeing to be a part of my series of interviews in which I talk with people who have ideas that can be valuable to the legal profession. I am excited to have readers learn your thoughts on leadership. Back in 1984, you wrote a paper called THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS LEADERSHIP. I was quite intrigued when I heard the title. Would you tell us more about what you wrote in this paper with such a provocative title and perhaps some of what you have added to your thinking in the years since?

I wrote the paper to record correct knowledge ... an urge of intellectual honesty. In the paper I quote Martin Luther, who reputedly advanced his theses against Church orthodoxy with the remark, "Hier stehe ich. Ich kann nicht anders." (Here I stand. I cannot do otherwise). Me, too.

Another perspective on my position is that I am an iconoclast; literally, a breaker of (sacred) images. Leadership has become something akin to the holy grail of the applied social sciences. That's as folly as the ancient alchemists, who proclaimed that base metals could be transmuted to precious ones, but failed to figure out how. Oops...

I suppose that under these circumstances, the title is provocative...after all, I'm tugging on Superman's Cape. But what I want to focus on often doesn't occur to the persons who are provoked by the title. They want to dispute it viscerally, stoutly maintaining that there IS such a thing, even if they can't explain it. That's called faith, and is properly applied

Interview of Carol Metzker on her new book APPRECIATIVE INTELLIGENCE

Thanks very much, Carol, for the being the first in my series of interviews of thinkers and practitioners with ideas that are valuable to the legal profession. Let's start out by asking you to tell us a little bit about Appreciative Inquiry and Appreciative Intelligence.

I'm delighted to talk with you - thanks for the invitation.

Appreciative Intelligence is the ability behind creativity, leadership and success - a newly introduced intelligence. It provides a new answer to what enables successful people to dream up extraordinary and innovative ideas, why people join them in realizing these dreams, and how they achieve these goals despite challenges.

The definition of Appreciative Intelligence (term coined by Tojo Thatchenkery) is the ability to perceive the positive inherent generative potential within the present. Put simply and metaphorically, it is the ability to see the mighty oak in the acorn. Successful leaders and innovators see more than a little capped nut that some of us might just step over; they see the possibilities for a strong, healthy tree with further generations of oaks and acorns. Appreciative Intelligence has three components: