legal sanity

I've posted before on the dawning Conceptual Age and the lawyering skills we need to survive and thrive in this era that puts a premium on empathy, meaning and human-to-human connection.

There's always a dark hour before the dawn and, for lawyers, the shift into this new age has been marked by widespread discontent, depletion and attrition cycling through our ranks.

It's also been marked by the call of practitioners wanting to break this vicious cycle, like the one sounded in this recent boston.com article on Getting lawyers to reset moral compass [flagged at lexisOne]. It discusses the work of law professor and author David Hall, who believes that the legal profession "is in depression and must openly reclaim spiritual values to reconnect with its noble mission." According to the piece, Hall defines spirituality as "the intentional decision to search for a deeper meaning in life and to actualize in one's life the highest values that can be humanly obtained."

Hall's vision for reclaiming meaning in our work as service providers teams well with the idea that more and more consumers are looking for goods and services that offer something meaningful to them. This is the message of a book called Making Meaning: How Successful Businesses Deliver Meaningful Consumer Experiences that was recently reviewed at Harvard Business School's working Knowledge. It's now on my reading list. The part of the review that really grabs my attention is its rendition of the book's take on the experiences people find most meaningful: "accomplishment, beauty, creation, community, duty, enlightenment, freedom, harmony, justice, oneness, redemption, security, truth, validation, and wonder."

As with any transition, there will be those who embrace the organizational changes the Conceptual Age heralds and those who resist them despite all the warning signs that change is so desperately needed.

An article I read today - titled Got Kids? These Clients Don't Care - sharply reminds us that it can be tough to shake the old status quo; especially in a profession that, for years, has put a premium on paying our dues and encouraged us to value transactions over relationships.

Confirming that old habits die hard, the article shares how a panel of female corporate counsel recently advised a gathering of women lawyers to "keep their personal lives out of the equation." One panelist put it even more bluntly, stating: "You are a commodity to us." She then explained that when "she hires outside counsel, she cares about the work [ ] not the relationship."