A great legacy has been born, and I’m proud to be able to announce it! J. Kim Wright’s book “Lawyers As Peacemakers” has been published by the American Bar Association and is now available. We also did a fabulous Creating Legacy Studio interview with Kim, about her legacy journey to this point – “A Legal Rebel’s Legacy Story” – and a recording of it is available for download on The Studio program site.
I’ve been on this journey with Kim since just after the turn of the new millenium (can you say Y2K?) – actually a lot longer than that, only I didn’t know her. We were both restless and somewhat disillusioned with the legal profession. Okay, not so much the profession, or even lawyers themselves, but the system within which we all had to practice. We (and it turns out a number of others) felt there had to be a better way to use the law to serve clients and help make their lives and businesses better. So we started making stuff up, borrowing from other traditions and professions, and fitting these new approaches into the structure of the law.
Yeah, they were teaching negotiation techniques when I went through law school. And mediation – facilitated negotiation providing parties assistance to resolve their own disputes without a third party making the decision for them – was coming on the scene. (This dates me, I know, since most post- college age people have at least heard of mediation and have some sense for what it is – thank God.)
But many of us longed for more civility and more constructive … yes, well, healing, approaches to legal problems. Why should the health care and spiritual professions be the only ones to heal with their work?
The information age being what it was back when Y2K posed what turned out to be not so much threat and disaster as hype (oh and the media has gotten better with the latter since then hasn’t it? But I digress …), the powers that be put me together with Kim Wright and it’s been a totally kindred legal experience ever since. I was retiring from law practice then, to pursue the more developmental and creative sides of what I did with clients – help them prevent legal intrusions, have successful businesses and happy lives, and even make things better in the world. And Kim was, dare I say, hell-bent on improving the way law is practiced: the entire profession.
As a legacy story, this book publication has all the great elements: Kim discovered her passion and interests, knew who she wanted to serve and benefit, figured out a structure that worked for her and has now created a number of artifacts that will persist in producing social good – this book being one of many others and no doubt some to come. And she did it all on a shoe-string with her guts and grit and determination and heart. For her efforts she has already been recognized as one of the ABA’s Legal Rebels for 2009.
Who says a great legacy requires a large financial estate? Even with that, it still takes the underlying guts and grit and determination and heart first – to persist and pursue and bring something beneficial to life.
In the 528 pages of “Lawyers as Peacemakers” Kim provides the reader with the first comprehensive look at the myriad approaches talented and caring lawyers have developed to do just what we were dreaming about when we met. If she hasn’t personally met and interviewed all the pioneers in this movement to tell the stories of how they work together, heal and bring peace to conflict and discord, she knows 99% of them. And she is their — our — champion. Heck, she’s a champion for the entire legal profession and the people it serves – with her help in a more therapeutic way. It is my fervent hope that her impact is huge – even while I recognize how hard it is to turn a ship as large as an entire profession. Even a few degrees on the trim tab, like Kim has made, can make a big difference.
Kim tells me that while writing the book she gathered enough additional information to write a follow up companion to it and not repeat anything she talks about in Lawyers As Peacemakers. I hope it will soon follow her magnificaent first book!
May the positive change continue as others get on board. Cheers, Dolly