History of CuttingEdgeLaw.com

I almost didn’t become a lawyer. More than twenty years ago, my law school experience didn’t sell me on the possibility of practicing law. One of my classmates was so offended by my role in founding the ACLU chapter at my law school that he turned me over to the IRS. “You’ve obviously got too much time on your hands,” he told me. As the mother of seven, going through my own nasty divorce, I was just doing what was before me to do. I wasn’t sure of the offense. I barely knew him or the other people I sat near as we quaked in our chairs, afraid we’d be called on and publicly humiliated. Somehow, instead of pulling together against the common “enemy”, we became isolated from each other.

I did love the volunteer work I did in the community as a Guardian ad Litem. My family law clinic experience touched on something important for me. Helping families seemed like what I had been born to do. Clinic included an opportunity to reflect and actually talk to other lawyers about what we were doing. I learned my Myers-Briggs Type and actually met a fellow student, my clinic partner, who had lived across the hall from me all along.

But, I didn’t like my brethren, my classmates and the lawyers I met in court. I decided that I would find a way to use my law degree that wasn’t tied to the adversarial system. I didn’t want to be one of “THEM.”

Several years later, I met Forrest Bayard, a Chicago lawyer who introduced me to the concepts of Collaborative Law. THAT, I could do!

Fast forward, I opened a law practice focused on helping families. I learned about collaborative law, forms of mediation, restorative justice, interdisciplinary practice and practicing holistic law as a peacemaker. I transformed my practice and, as Steve Keeva said, found ‘joy and satisfaction in the practice of law.’

After several years in the living laboratory of practicing holistic law in a small southern town, I was finally beginning to feel some confidence about my work (and ability to consistently meet payroll) when my husband was offered a job three thousand miles away. A number of factors fell together and I found myself in Portland, Oregon, spending the summer trying to communicate what I’d learned into a web site.

RenaissanceLawyer.com was created that summer when I was trying to figure out whether to take the Oregon Bar Exam. It captured what I knew then about a budding movement in the law that was more humanistic, future-focused on peacemaking and healing. I wrote about the pioneers whose ideas were beginning to enter the mainstream culture. In those first years, over 100,000 people a year visited the Renaissance Lawyer web site. An organization was created and a board came forward to try to encourage and keep pace with the ideas and approaches that were emerging and beginning to gain footing. One of the approaches went from a handful of committed participants to a national organization with thousands of members. Other ideas morphed and merged into new forms. Bar associations, law schools, and individual lawyers explored the ideas. Books, law review articles, magazines, even Paul Harvey explored the innovations and renovations of law.

My friend, Mike Moiso, said that RenaissanceLawyer.com was like building a football stadium and not even selling water. As a board, RLS felt incredible pressure to keep up with a movement that had as many expressions as participants.

A few years ago, I left the RLS board to pursue developing CuttingEdgeLaw.com. I never imagined that it would take four years of planning, foundation-creating, inquiry, and research. A whole year on the road, 25 states, and dozens of interviews later, here it is.