Comprehensive Law

In this final segment, Susan shares some of her personal reflections on the movement and her fifteen years of pioneering work, especially the people.

In Part 4 of the interview, Susan Daicoff discusses the comprehensive law movement - what is it, why is it important? She also touches on the synergy of humanizing legal education and comprehensive law and how pervasive the movement is becoming.

In Part 5 of her interview, Professor Susan Daicoff continues, discussing being a whole person and being a lawyer.

Who would I have been if I hadn't been a lawyer?

In Part 3 of her July, 2008 interview, Susan Daicoff continues to share her work about lawyer personalities by discussing the Myers Briggs Type Indicator. Specifically she talks about how lawyers tend to be thinkers and how feelers can thrive in the practice of law.

Part 2. Susan Daicoff continues her story about her personal career path and how her work on lawyer psychology led to work in the comprehensive lawyer. She also talks about sources of lawyer distress and offers solutions.

An Introduction and History of the Movement

As long as there have been disputes, there have been methods of resolving them. From today's perspective, the adversarial legal system was a big improvement upon the armed combat and duels that preceded it and it has endured for centuries as the preferred method of resolving disputes institutionally. Argument, analysis, precedents, and drawing fine distinctions helped the law evolve to a finely edged sword.

Parallel to the formal and institutionalized legal system of courts and lawyers, people have always continued to pursue informal solutions. Beginning about 35 years ago, these informal processes began to be integrated into the formal institution of law. Mediation moved from an informal process to a more accepted option within the court system. Many courts set up mediation programs, mediators became recognized and valued as having a particular set of skills, and mediation even became mandatory in certain kinds of cases. Courts found that their work load was eased by the introduction of mediation.

In the 1990's, around the world, other approaches began to find their ways into the formal legal system. In 1974 in Kitchener, Ontario, Judge Gordon McConnell was asked to consider a restorative approach to a juvenile offense, allowing the juveniles to face their victims. He could find no precedence in law to allow this idea. However, he was tired of the revolving door of justice and was looking for a new approach for justice so he allowed the victim-offender meeting. Since then hundreds of restorative justice programs have developed, including in the Departments of Correction of at least 18 states, with others underway. (See http://www.sfu.ca/crj/kelly.html for the story of the young man who was that first case.)