A Vision for a New Legal System
J Kim Wright
Coach/Consultant Helping Lawyers Build Values-Driven, Sustainable Practices | Practicing Lawyer | Conscious Contracts? Co-Creator | ABA Published Author | Trainer | Trauma Educator | Global Advocate for Integrative Law
A few years ago, at Findhorn, Scotland, I was asked to write my Vision. The person who asked said I had one minute to talk and the talk was due in 20 minutes. Three-hundred people were waiting to hear it. I scribbled some words on a scrap of paper. With very few refinements, this is what I read to the group that day.
The seeds of the late 1990s and early 2000s have flourished. We are grateful to our pioneers and trailblazers who held this vision and brought it to fruition.
Lawyers are now recognized for our true purpose: peacemaking, problem-solving, and healing the wounds of the community. We are changemakers in society. Trials are rare and civil. Collaboration, prevention, and transformation are the lawyers’ stock in trade. We create sustainable agreements and resolutions. We are happy in our profession and lives.
Lawmakers serve, conscious of all the stakeholders, and of our interconnectedness with Nature and each other. They work on common goals and shared values to benefit everyone.
Law enforcement focuses on Right Relationships, working in partnership with the community to foster strong, empowered, safe communities.
Judges are wise leaders who help to balance competing values, hold everyone accountable, and deliver fair results with love, compassion and empathy. They look for beneficial and therapeutic results.
Prisons are a part of our past. Now we focus on rehabilitation, accountability, healing, and reconnection for all members of society. Criminal behavior is seen as a symptom of brokenness that needs to be healed.
Law students still learn the focused, analytical thinking that is known as thinking like a lawyer. Now they are also trained in holistic thinking. Art is part of the balanced core curriculum and law students are encouraged to pursue their interests, values, and wholeness.
Our history of restorative practices and nonviolent communication in schools has helped to produce citizens who tell their truths, take responsibility, and accept accountability.
The Legal System Works for Everyone. There are no more lawyer jokes. They're not funny anymore.
Integrative Counselling and Restorative Justice approaches to stress, trauma and conflict
5 年J. Kim Wright I’ve only just read this vision. Thank you for posting. There’s definitely a “wow” factor because it’s revolutionary in its breadth and depth. To paraphrase David Bohm, from his book, Wholeness and the Implicate Order”, if our worldview is such that we “see” fragmented, we inevitably “do” fragmented. I see your vision as a call to a worldview that sees and values wholeness. Wrongdoers are much more than their wrongdoing. Lawyers and the legal system can be part of a much bigger picture in which Justice seeks to put things right rather add pain by punishment to a world that already has plenty of pain. Good on you for this vision, Kim. May more and more people (not only Lawyers!) “see” like you do!....I’m just gonna go and reread your post ??
Property and Commercial Lawyer
5 年Wow! Love this vision - thanks for sharing it and inspiring us to keep at it, to keep talking it into being.