About the Law Program
December 30th, 2011
Dear Friends of the Law Program,
The work of the Law Program has been an important component of the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society's success for more than 10 years. While our support for expanding contemplative practices in law remains high, as of January 1, 2012, our Law Program will cease to operate as a free-standing program of the Center.
The Center for Contemplative Mind in Society presently focuses its efforts on broadening the reach of contemplative practices in society through Higher Education via the Association for Contemplative Mind in Higher Education and related programs and events. For more information, please visit the ACMHE webpage at acmhe.org and the Center's main website at contemplativemind.org.
The Center intends to continue to support the ongoing work of lawyers and legal academics to transform legal education, building on the work of Charles Halpern, Leonard Riskin, and other pioneers in the movement to bring together mindfulness and law with whom we have been affiliated over the years. We look forward to working with both new and experienced law teachers in this transformative and inspiring work.
We are grateful for the work of the many who have contributed to the Program's success over the years--including the Program's founder and Center for Contemplative Mind in Society co-founder Charles Halpern, and its most recent Director, Doug Chermak. We invite you to become involved in their new endeavors:
- Charles Halpern has been appointed to direct a new Initiative for Mindfulness in Law at Berkeley Law. A website and mailing list will be set up soon.
- Douglas Chermak wishes to offer gratitude to all of the supporters of the Law Program and the many folks who have attended our programs over the years. He remains committed to furthering the work of the law program. In that regard, he will continue working on initiatives at the forefront of the intersection of mindfulness and the legal profession as an Associate Director of the Institute for Mindfulness Studies, directing its Mindfulness in Law Program. The website is found at www.mindfulnessinlawprogram.com. He is excited to continue to serve the legal profession in this capacity and looks forward to being in community with you and hopefully seeing many of you again.
Sincerely,
Daniel Barbezat
Executive Director
The Center for Contemplative Mind in Society
Here is our previous text describing the work of the Law Program:
The Law Program explores ways of helping lawyers, judges, mediators, law professors and students reconnect with their deepest values and intentions, through meditation, yoga, and other contemplative and spiritual practices. We run retreats and events which provide a framework for considering ways in which contemplative awareness can enhance and enrich our professional and personal lives, and bring them more into balance. Our retreats address questions and ideas from both a contemplative and legal perspective: the nature of winning and losing, the role of compassion in adversarial situations, truth and “right speech,” Socratic and contemplative methods of inquiry, action and nonaction, separation and connection, and listening.
Lawyers enter the field of law for a myriad of reasons. Some want to help the disenfranchised; some see law practice as a means to financial security. Others seek to promote democracy and fairness. Still others hope to correct societal injustices. In one way or another, the personal reasons for pursuing a law career reflect one's individual morals and priorities.
Along the professional path, rigorous training in analytical thought, combative discourse and a narrowing focus on a body of written rules tends to obscure or overshadow those original guiding principles. Law students are trained to “think like a lawyer” rather than to think as individual moral agents. Moreover, the demand of exhausting work schedules during and after law school leaves little time for leisure and fun, let alone for quiet introspection and realignment with one's inner compass. Professional stress and burnout are commonplace. As a result, many lawyers find that the details of their daily work, the analytic decisions they make and the directions they pursue on behalf of their clients bear little resemblance to the values and aspirations that originally led them into a law career. Furthermore, the very notion of the law as a “helping profession” is laughable to much of contemporary America, and this reflection serves to further demoralize practicing attorneys and to discourage many who would seek to join the profession.
Within this context, in October of 1998 the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society hosted its first Contemplative Law Retreat. This venture began a series of experiments within a new model: bringing together law students, faculty and practitioners in a shared space for a retreat experience that included instruction in and time for both contemplative practices and group discussions about combining these practices with a life in the law. The premise was simple: If lawyers had the time and tools for quiet contemplation, their professional actions could be informed by their own deep and abiding personal values. If lawyers could gain more insight and perspective on the many factors that influence their work, from emotions to physical health to stress, they could recognize and ultimately disengage from distractions and attend to their clients' needs more completely, and with far greater satisfaction.
Law Program Transition Committee
Angela Harris
Professor of Law, University of California Berkeley School of Law
Charles Halpern
Co-Founder; Chair Emeritus, Board of Trustees
Rhonda Magee
Professor of Law, The University of San Francisco School of Law
Stephanie Phillips
Professor of Law, University at Buffalo Law School
Len Riskin
Chesterfield Smith Professor of Law, University of Florida Levin College of Law
Scott Rogers
Director, Mindfulness and the Law Program, University of Miami School of Law
Tirien Steinbach
Executive Director, East Bay Community Law Center