idealawg

Articles on Buddhism and the law, lawyers and legal system

From the University at Buffalo Law School Law, Buddhism and Social Change come several articles, including

• The Dalai Lama Speaks on Law
• The Ideal and Non-Ideal in Behavior Guidance: Reflections on Law and Buddhism in Conversation with the Dalai Lama
• Religiosity and the Invocation of Law in the Conversation with the Dalai Lama
• “Necessary Evil”: The Growth of a System of Judicial Courts and the Responses it Evoked among the Buddhist Monastic Community in Ancient Sri Lanka
• Universal Compassion and the Lawyer’s Duty
• Internal Motivations, External Coercion, and Educating for Happiness
• Some Notes on the Buddha As a Law Giver.

Click to download the articles.

Lawyer and public interest entrepreneur Charlie Halpern speaking in Denver this month on reflective practice

Charlie Halpern will be giving two presentations in Denver. Although CLE has been applied for, the talks will be of interest to a an audience wider than just the legal profession. Both events will be at the Sturm College of Law, University of Denver. The events which I urge you to attend are . . .

Making Waves and Riding Currents: Activism and the Practice of Wisdom

This first presentation is at noon on Monday, October 27, 2008, in Room 125, Ricketson Law Building. Dean Charles Halpern will discuss some of the main themes in his new book Making Waves and Riding the Currents: Activism and the Practice of Wisdom — including his pioneering work as a public interest lawyer and as the founding Dean of the City University of New York Law School. He will connect these themes to the lives of legal professionals, both in their study and practice, and in their thinking about career paths.

Lunch will be provided by the CDC. The event is sponsored by the Public Interest Law Group

Thinking about a Lawyer’s Work: An Introduction to Meditation for Legal Professionals

The second presentation is at 5:30 PM on Tuesday, October 28, in Room 180, Ricketson Law Building. Halpern and Prof. Kuennen (DU Law Clinical Professor) will lead a workshop together on Law and Meditation, similar to the one that they led at the AALS, 2008 Conference on Clinical Legal Education [pdf]. The workshop will provide interactive exercises and simulations that will permit participants to experience and assess the benefits of meditation practice in their lives as legal professionals.

A reception will follow. The presentation is sponsored by the Westminster Law Library.

To RSVP or for more information e-mail [email protected].

Event flyer [pdf]

For those of you who do not know who Charlie Halpern is, here's a brief bio.

LAW (Love in Action with Wisdom) course being taught at CUNY Law School this fall

Fellowships from the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society were given to Professors Maria Arias and  Victor Goode for a course on contemplative practice and the law. The description is found in the fall course offerings  Spring 2009 offerings [pdf]. From the Center Web site announcing the 2008 Contemplative Practice Fellows:

This course for law students explores the benefits of contemplative practices for lawyers doing social justice work. Students will practice a variety of meditation and contemplative practices to develop inner wisdom, awareness, and insight to inform work and decisions in lawyering for social justice. Students will explore developing compassion for themselves and the people being served. These practices will be used to open up the possibility of how to solve problems using one’s most creative selves and greatest wisdom. Students will explore how through social justice work one can transform themselves and the communities being served.

Sounds like a valuable option for those law students at CUNY. I have long been advocating mindfulness in the law.

National tour of CuttingEdgeLaw.com: Watch the lawyer interviews now

Kim Wright is touring the country with a videographer on what she calls "The New Lawyer Tour." She is interviewing "lawyers whose work distinguishes them as pioneers in peacemaking and champions of justice." Click for a complete description of the tour and the soon-to-be-launched magazine CuttingEdgeLaw.com. You may watch some of the interviews here. Enjoy your travels, Kim!

The legal profession is changing, but how?

High salaries and prestige, training and loyalty, alternatives to traditional law firms, and generational differences are just a few of the topics addressed in  "Junior Associate Woes - The State of the Legal Profession, Part 2" (FindLaw), an article reporting on a symposium held last month at Stanford Law. Although I urge you the read the article in its entirety, below are a few excerpts I found most provocative of thought.

"Young lawyers want to work at home in their pajamas, looking at their fish tanks and listening to their iPods," said Gordon Davidson, Partner and Chairman, Fenwick & West LLP. Although his statement is tongue-in-cheek, it captures the "play ethic" embodied in younger generations.
. . .
According to some lawyers who post on FindLaw's Greedy Associates, the current state of the profession is so unfulfilling that there is a distinct career path for attorneys, from "BigLaw through to non-legal employment." Essentially, the professional life of an attorney is a progression from money to self-fulfillment.

. . ."The law firm that cracks the lifestyle

"I am just trying to save the world": How would you identify a toxic mediator?

I am writing an article on the legal profession's version of the helper syndrome. This syndrome results in a person helping others in order to ease his or her own pain or to ignore his or her own problems. Because of the lack of clarity or self-awareness on the part of the "helper," the results of the helping intervention can often be worse than nothing at all. The service professions frequently attract people who exhibit the helper syndrome. Even for the mentally healthy, the service relationship can be tricky.

A major consideration, and one that should be held steadfastly in the back of every professional's mind, is that the helping relationship is typically asymmetric: people are not on equal footing. Asymmetric relationships bring with them many potential problems, including dependence, resentment, and suspicion. A key antidote to those perils is the client or helpee maintaining autonomy and self-determination in as large a measure as appropriate and possible.

Another key is well-placed trust in the professional. Gerard Lulofs* writes:

[T]he professions are separate from other vocations because they require a relatively high level of systematic theoretical knowledge. This brings with it a market imbalance, because the information at the disposal of the exchange partners is asymmetrically distributed. . . . As a rule, it is the supplier who determines the needs of the recipient, whereas the latter is seldom in a position to assess the quality of the services provided. The most prominent characteristic, therefore, of the professional services market lies in the element of trust contained in the exchange relationship between provider and recipient.

Still another key to effective service relationships, perhaps the most essential, is the professional's mental

"Moyer to lawyers: Fight foreclosure for free" [using mediation]

Excerpt:

Ohio Supreme Court Chief Justice Thomas Moyer, a Sandusky native, knows home foreclosures are a big problem back home in Erie County and across Ohio.

Moyer is asking the courts and Ohio attorneys to reach out and help as many homeowners as they can.

The chief justice has asked judges who handle foreclosure cases to use mediation to resolve as many cases as possible.

And he's asked Ohio lawyers to volunteer in foreclosure cases to help families who can't otherwise afford a lawyer.

Click to read the rest of "Moyer to lawyers: Fight foreclosure for free."

The Lawyer's Commandments by Eduardo Juan Couture

These ten wise commandments for lawyers were written by Eduardo Juan Couture and translated by James A. Diaz.

The Lawyer's Commandments

I. Study: The law is changing constantly. If you do not follow in its footsteps, each day you will be a lawyer less and less.

II. Think: The law is learned by studying, but it is practiced by thinking.

III. Work: The law is an arduous battle placed at the service of justice.

IV. Strive: Your duty is to strive for the law, but the day you find conflict between law and justice, strive for justice.

V. Be Loyal: Loyal to your client whom you should never abandon even when you learn he or she is not worthy of you; loyal to your adversaries even when they are disloyal to you; loyal to the judge, who is not knowledgeable of the facts and must rely on what you tell him or her, and, as to the law, every now and then must rely on what you advocate.

The last 5 commandments are here or here. (Hat tip for the second link to Law Is Cool.)

On an aligned note, here is A Physician's Affirmation by Dr. Fredrick Ralph Abrams (a wonderful man with whom I have had the pleasure of talking on several occasions).

Susan Cartier Liebel deserves a standing ovation for Blawg Review #142

Susan adds a great contribution to the blogosphere in two ways. First, Blawg Review #142 is a wise letter to a new lawyer. Second, she very cleverly intersperses the names of many blogs in her advice, thus making the letter a Blawg Review. I had much fun being surprised each time I clicked through to a blog to see what post Susan had chosen for linking.

Susan introduces her masterpiece:

This Blawg Review is designed as a Letter to New Lawyer.  I've incorporated the interesting names of many legal blogs as part of the narrative but you will have no clue what the topic of each blog post is until you click on the link.  Hopefully you will have fun discovering each blog post.  I've included some of the well-known and prolific usual suspects and am introducing you to some new and exciting blogs I've recently discovered.  There may even be other Letters to a New Lawyer you will uncover. So, enjoy!

You will enjoy! Bravo, Susan!

Educating the new professionals: "In but not of" the legal institution

Change magazine published "A New Professional: The Aims of Education Revisited" by Parker J. Palmer. In this article, Palmer looks at how to educate the new professional and he defines that professional as

a person who is not only competent in his or her discipline but has the skill and the will to deal with the institutional pathologies that threaten the profession's highest standards.

He distinguishes between professions and their institutions.

[T]he functions of a profession are not necessarily those of the institutional structures that house it. The fact that we have schools does not mean we have education. The fact that we have hospitals does not mean we have health care. The fact that we have courts does not mean we have justice. We need professionals who are "in but not of" their institutions, whose allegiance to the core values of their fields makes them resist the institutional diminishment of those values.

I find that paragraph to be very provocative of thought. How about you?

Parker then asks,

How might we prepare students to be teachers, lawyers, physicians, and clergy—to say nothing of parents and neighbors and citizens—who can help transform the institutions that dominate our lives?

He makes five proposals which I will list here. I urge you to read the article for fuller explanation of what he is recommending by each of these five.

• (1) We must help our students uncover, examine, and debunk the myth that institutions are external to and constrain us, as if they possessed powers that render us helpless—an assumption that is largely unconscious and wholly untrue.
• (2) We must take our students' emotions as seriously as we take their intellects.