I am tired of the way lawyers and legal practice are being perceived.

I am putting out a call to action because I am tired of perpetuating an outdated paradigm. The majority of legal practice as we know it, is, in my humble opinion, past its used-by date. I am, like a growing number of other lawyers, calling for a shift in the way law is practised.

Why?

Just today I was approach by a stressed out mother. Her son, she informs me, was being treated as if his role as a father within the Family Law system didn’t matter. She too hasn’t seen her grandchildren in many years and now deals with her son’s anguish in addition to her own.

This all too familiar distressing scenario saddens me each time I hear it. It’s no secret that we have a system that propagates suffering.

It’s evident after speaking to lawyers from around the world, that there are too many of us who, at best, lack job satisfaction and at worst are suffering from depression and have lost colleagues to suicide. We lawyers are supposed to appear, for all intents and purposes, as ironclad, immovable towers of strength, wielding our power against injustice. Who’d have thought that we’d study so hard for so long to end up in a dissatisfying career?

The foundations of the institution is cracking. Just ask any member of the public, like the mother in the above scenario, what they think of the legal profession and you will know what I’m saying.

Around seven years ago I went on a quest to find some solutions. I first looked at wellbeing models for lawyers and found that there wasn’t a great deal of information available.

Vulnerability, it seems is still not the industry buzzword.

I found some typical wellness advice – speak to your supervisor (who was probably the one giving you the grief in the first place) eat well, drink plenty of water, exercise and my personal favourite: go and meditate.

All wonderful advice.

But as a qualified yoga instructor I knew that not many lawyers were trained to understand what ‘go and meditate’ really meant. Save that most people think it resembles sitting in the lotus position chanting ‘om’ for hours on end. In a cave. Not helpful. I mean, who’s got the time? Or the cave?

Aside from that, what I noticed most of all was that there was no real inquiry into how we came to be in such a stressed-out state.

Yes, there are some obvious clues, like our duty to the dreaded timesheet which finds you working 80 hours per week. Then, of course, there are the clients. They don’t come bearing chocolates, people! It follows then that the stresses also arise as a direct result of the inherent nature of our work. It’s primarily centred in conflict.

Then there are other performance expectations. The public expects us to ‘win’ for them. A client comes to us hurt and bitter. They want retribution. They hand us a problem on a plate that they couldn’t solve and say “Here! I can’t handle this, you take it and make me feel better. Win for me. Show me I am right!”.

Most of us get up in the morning knowing we are going into battle. And even though it’s not supposed to, that battle invariably becomes personal. Because of this, we have learned to wear metaphorical suits of armour so we no longer have to feel the barbs being launched squarely at us as individuals. Fun day at the office!

As a result we are losing our ability to feel.

To ‘win’ for our client, we are required to focus upon the righteousness in our client’s case. So, I will of course find a way to show my opposition how my client is right. My opposition will say their client is right. But in the eyes of the system one will be deemed ‘wrong’, in what is, in my opinion, an outdated win-lose model.

Yes, both parties can be right. It’s a matter of perspective. This is a great clue as to how this system can be remodelled. Perspective can teach us so very much about ourselves and how we view the world. More importantly it can show us how our conflicts came to be.

As humans we have families, neighbours and friends. We are relational beings. You can see in your social networks how vast your connections can be.

Law is about governing relationships.

Problems arise in relationships. In reality you cannot separate the person from the problem. Instead of isolating the problem from the client, we need to help them discover how they arrived at the place they find themselves in. This quest will require an examination of the relationship giving rise to the problem.

Relationships are the gateway to self-discovery.

This is an important factor in support of my idea of shifting the approach to legal practice.

Presently we hear a client’s story, delve into the depths of their dispute for the purpose of supporting how our client is right, and should ‘win’. In doing so, we inadvertently support that public perception of “my lawyer will take you to the cleaners!”

Yes, lawyers are seen as powerful. But from the public’s view we appear to wield that power in separating humans, in a type of community destruction, rather than in unity and the bringing together of people. It’s like we are the shield and the sword. Divide and conquer. Nasty!

A better solution may be that we work together with our client’s conflicts to reveal their innermost fears. We can show them that the conflicts they are in are, when looked at from an entirely new perspective are their ally.

We need to hand back to the client their personal responsibility in the conflict. Their response-ability… their ability to respond.

Until people can understand why they are in their conflicts, they will continue to repeat the same patterns. In family law for example, I’ve seen people finalise one relationship only to come back years later with a similar story in another. Why do you think we have recidivism?

But before we can show our clients this shift, we need to, as Gandhi says, “be the change”. If you want revolutionary change, we need to deconstruct the old system from its foundations and that starts with deconstructing the present lawyer model.

If this excites you, let me first show you how to deal with your own internal conflicts to see what great benefits they offer you. When you understand this, you will be able to do the same for your clients.

Now, if you want to get ahead of the class, I’ve written a whole book on the topic that I will be talking about. It’s called “Let’s Kiss All The Lawyers!… said no-one, ever”. You can read the first few pages by clicking here.

Lawyers, let’s be the change.