Contemplative Practices

Attention is paramount in the law - attention to details; to legal, ethical and moral principles; and to the hearts and minds of clients, colleagues, judges and juries. A meditation practice helps lawyers cultivate a greater ability to “pay attention.” Meditation can also help lawyers deal better with stress, develop self-awareness and understanding of others, improve concentration and creativity, and perform better as attorneys and mediators.

Recognizing the value of this practice, many law firms are initiating meditation training, including Boston firms Hale & Dorr and Nutter, McClennan & Fish, and the Minneapolis firm of Leonard, Street and Deinard. Students at seven law schools -- Denver, Hastings, Miami, Missouri-Columbia, North Carolina, Stanford, and Suffolk -- have taken mindfulness meditation instruction on campus, sometimes as part of law school courses. Groups of lawyers across the country are gathering together to practice meditation and to reflect on their law and/or mediation practices. For instance, Zen priest and lawyer Mary Mocine leads a monthly Dharma Group for lawyers in the San Francisco Bay Area.

The Law Program at the Center for Contemplative Mind explores ways of helping lawyers, judges, law professors and students reconnect with their deepest values and intentions, through meditation, yoga, and other contemplative and spiritual practices. The program has sponsored a series of insight meditation retreats for lawyers and law students, These retreats include instruction in contemplative practices and group discussions about combining these practices with a life in the law. The Law Program’s Coordinator is Douglas Chermak.

Contemplative law is gaining attention by mainstream academia not only as means for personal development stress reduction, but also to cultivate perspective and skill to be a more effective lawyer and mediator. Some of the institutions that are embracing contemplative practice include:

For many years, the Initiative on Mindfulness in Law and Dispute Resolution at the University of Missouri-Columbia School of Law was the leading initiative devoted to exploring the potential benefits and risks of mindfulness and related contemplative practices to members of the legal and dispute resolution professions and those who use or are affected by those professions. Efforts included research, teaching in law school courses, training through CLE programs, and public service. Professor Leonard L. Riskin, was director of this effort. Professor Riskin has written extensively on the benefits of mindfulness to lawyers and to mediation. In 2007, Professor Riskin joined the faculty at the University of Florida Levin College of Law as Chesterfield Smith Professor. See Leonard L. Riskin, Mindfulness: Foundational Training for Dispute Resolution, 54 Journal of Legal Education 79-91 (2004) and Leonard L. Riskin, The Contemplative Lawyer: On the Potential Contributions of Mindfulness Meditation to Law Students and Lawyers and their Clients 7 Harvard Negotiation Law Review 1-66 (June 2002) (the centerpiece of a Symposium on Mindfulness in Law and ADR). A web cast of the live symposium held at Harvard Law School in March 2002 is available at http://www.pon.harvard.edu/news/2002/riskin_mindfulness.php3.

City University of New York (CUNY) Law School: The Contemplative Lawyering Program at CUNY Law was launched on September 10th, 2001. “The contemplative lawyering program starts with the premise that the viability of lawyers transforming systems of inequities, injustice and discrimination and of preserving human rights and liberties is enhanced by and consistent with a lawyer becoming a force of healing and reconciliation in underserved communities. In seeking to fulfill such noble pursuits and survive the existing legal paradigm, the legal community at CUNY Law seeks the inspiration to go deeper, to overcome adversity and see the possibilities of new models. This is where contemplative practices come in.” The program offers weekly yoga and meditation classes for students and faculty, works to integrate contemplative practice into the Law School’s curriculum, partners with transformational justice programs in the New York metropolitan area, and hosts special events about the law, transformational justice, social justice, public interest lawyering and contemplative practice. Jeanne Anselmo (anselmo@mail.law.cuny.edu) is the Contemplative Practice Coordinator.

The Harvard Negotiation Insight Initiative (HNII): For many years, HNII was a research project at the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School. Founded and directed by Erica Ariel Fox and after a successful launch at the Harvard Program on Negotiation, the Insight Initiative moved off-campus and evolved into the Global Negotiation Insight Institute. The Insight Institute continues its mission to foster model global citizens who can return to their homes, organizations and societies equipped to advance a just and peaceful world. The Global Negotiation Insight Institute will offer the Summer Learning Forum and Autumn Institute in 2008. In addition to acting as a research center, HNII historically had numerous public education components. It has hosted several dialog series, bringing together an expert in the negotiation field with a leader in the world of spirit. The fall 2004 dialog, for example, featured a dialog between Peter Senge, nationally known organizational development expert and author of The Fifth Discipline, and Jon Kabat Zinn, leader in the field of mind-body medicine and author of Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life. The Summer 2005 forum had three separate workshops: Cultivating Balance: Mindfulness in the Law and Dispute Resolution with Professor Leonard Riskin and meditation instructor Melissa Blacker; Neutrality's Challenge: Professional Distance Meets Personal Engagement with Jack Himmelstein and Zen priest Norman Fischer; and Beyond Yes: Deeper Wisdom and the Art of Negotiation with Erica Fox and Rabbi Mark Gafni. And in 2007, over 150 lawyers began each morning in meditation and participated in workshops on the New Lawyer, the Enneagram, The New Testament and Law, and several other programs.

University of California, Hastings College of Law: Hastings’ Center for Negotiation and Dispute Resolution (CNDR) provides students and legal practitioners with a wide range of classes, clinic experiences, conferences, and service opportunities for mastering conflict theory and practical skills. Recently, CNDR also began incorporation meditation and mindfulness meditation in some of its mediation and negotiation classes. Starting spring of 2005, Hastings will also offer a weekly “sitting group” for interested students, staff and faculty.

Meditation is also proving to be of benefit in the criminal justice arena. For instance, The Enlightened Sentencing Project is a program in St. Louis, MO in which training in Transcendental Meditation (TM) is a condition of parole. TM has been taught to tens of thousands of inmates worldwide and has shown to have significant effect on recidivism rates. See http://www.enlightenedsentencing.org/research.htm. Vipassana meditation training has also been introduced to numerous prisons in the United States and abroad. See http://www.prison.dhamma.org/. Research is showing that such meditation instruction substantially reduces the rates of recidivism. See http://www.prison.dhamma.org/research.htm.

Other resources for attorneys interested in exploring how to integrate their spiritual or contemplative practice with their work as lawyer include the book Transforming Practices: Finding Joy and Satisfaction in the Legal Life (Contemporary Books, 1999)by Steve Keeva, a former senior editor at the American Bar Association Journal.

The Association for Conflict Resolution’s Spirituality Section: “The mission of the Spirituality Section is to transform conflict into peace through a deeper understanding of the essential unity of all beings.” The section seeks to provide a professional community to supports its members in expressing their vision in their practices, their careers and their lives. The Spirituality Section’s web page contains contact information and resources.