legal sanity

I just returned from the Association for Conflict Resolution’s Annual Conference where I gave a talk on Mediation Breakthrough: Aligning the Interests of Lawyers and their Clients to Optimize Conflict Resolution. This presentation is one of the offerings of my new training and development business and I was grateful for the opportunity to test-drive it and get some feedback. It was a fantastic experience all around. The presentation was very well received and I got to reconnect with many of the terrific people in the dispute resolution arena I’ve met over the years. There really was a sense of reunion and homecoming as we gathered to share ideas and our passion for finding ways to ease conflict in the world. It was great to be in this community of likeminded folks and it gave me even more incentive to carry on in my new venture. Back at home, I found this post from the Worthwhile blog that nicely captures my conference experience. It discusses the emerging Passion Economy in which people, “no longer content to exchange their time for money in the absence of meaning,” increasingly seek out work that connects them to their personal values. Finding a job that we’re passionate about in or outside the law is a topic I’ve repeatedly covered here, but it never seems to lose its luster.