Transforming Practices: Finding Joy and Satisfaction in the Legal Life

Book Description

"An important book for practicing and would-be lawyers and a healthy antidote for law-bashing laypersons."

Booklist

Transforming Practices explains how you can reconnect with the spiritual side of law practice and place more emphasis on your clients'­­and your own­­emotional and spiritual needs. Now includes a new foreword by Jan Schlichtmann, who attained national prominence with the release of Jonathan Harr's A Civil Action, which later became a movie starring John Travolta.


From the Publisher
Spirituality and law practice may sound like an oxymoron, but a quiet quest to find deeper meaning in life and work as a lawyer and to cure the ailments of today's cutthroat law firm environment is well underfoot within the legal community. Transforming Practices: Finding Joy and Satisfaction in the Legal Life is the first book to explore this movement toward bringing one's soul to the practice of law and returning to lawyering from a healing perspective, rather than an adversarial one. Filled with inspiring profiles of lawyers who have successfully changed their work habits and attitudes and who have healed the split between inner and outer, "us" and "them," and individual and community, Transforming Practices makes it clear that the opportunity for transformation exists for every lawyer, in every kind of law practice. Through the use of narrative, interviews and anecdotes that draw upon the experiences of lawyers from a broad spectrum of practice areas, the book demonstrates that it is okay for a lawyer to be human, to care, to let the values and priorities that matter at home also matter at work. Interestingly, Steven Keeva is not a lawyer himself. Rather, as a senior editor for the ABA Journal, the most widely read legal publication in the world, he has written about lawyers and the legal profession for nearly a decade. (Danielle Egan-Miller, Business Editor, NTC/Contemporary).


From the Back Cover

Steven Keeva's Transforming Practices Is Changing Lives

"Every lawyer and law student in America [should] read this book, study it, savor it, and make it a constant companion."
--Texas Lawyer

"If you don't like what you've become, if your life seems empty, sterile or diminished . . . and if you've ever desired a more fulfilling life in the law, then read this book!"
--The Pennsylvania Lawyer

"Goes back to the fundamentals of our humanity to describe a better way to be a lawyer. It actually does more than that. It describes how to be a better human being. Everything else flows from that."
--Corporate Legal Times

"An amazing little book that has the potential to significantly affect the lives of lawyers and their families. . . . Rather than write another book aimed at improving what we do, Keeva has written a book that can help improve who we are and what we are."
--Trial magazine

". . . Provides a needed resource for lawyers seeking to wrest their lives from the often implacable maw of corporate life."
--New York Law Journal

"[Transforming Practices] should help all lawyers recover the integration of life and work that alone makes a day's work worth it."
--Boston Bar Journal

Transforming Practices presents a revolutionary vision to America's nearly one million lawyers, many of whom have become disillusioned with their careers. Author Steven Keeva, assistant managing editor of the influential ABA Journal, shows how by cultivating a vibrant inner life, any lawyer can find profound satisfaction, pleasure, and joy in his or her work.

Through the use of narrative, interviews, and anecdotes from lawyers who have found ways to bring renewed meaning, fulfillment, and a deep sense of pleasure to their law practices, Keeva demonstrates that it is absolutely OK for a lawyer to be human, to care, to let the values and priorities that matter at home also matter on the job. Transforming Practices makes it clear that the opportunity for transformation exists for every lawyer, in every kind of law practice.

New to this edition is a foreword by Jan Schlichtmann, the lawyer whose extraordinary story was told in Jonathan Harr's bestseller, A Civil Action.


About the Author

FROM OUR EDITORS

This inspirational book will give everyone in the legal profession a whole new perspective. A call to integrate the practice of law with the practice of spirituality, this book provides the means to creating a meaningful and personally fulfilling law practice. With stories from lawyers who have made the leap, author Steven Keeva shows that lawyers can demonstrate their caring and compassion.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Transforming Practices presents a revolutionary vision to America's nearly one million lawyers, many of whom have become disillusioned with their careers. Author Steven Keeva, assistant managing editor of the influential ABA Journal, shows how by cultivating a vibrant inner life, any lawyer can find profound satisfaction, pleasure, and joy in his or her work.

Through the use of narrative, interviews, and anecdotes from lawyers who have found ways to bring renewed meaning, fulfillment, and a deep sense of pleasure to their law practices, Keeva demonstrates that it is absolutely OK for a lawyer to be human, to care, to let the values and priorities that matter at home also matter on the job. Transforming Practices makes it clear that the opportunity for transformation exists for every lawyer, in every kind of law practice.

New to this edition is a foreword by attorney Jan Schlichtmann, whose extraordinary story was told in Jonathan Harr's bestseller, A Civil Action

SYNOPSIS

Spirituality and law practice may sound like an oxymoron, but a quiet quest to find deeper meaning in life and work as a lawyer and to cure the ailments of today's cutthroat law firm environment is well underfoot within the legal community.

Transforming Practices: Finding Joy and Satisfaction in the Legal Life by Steven Keeva, Senior Editor of the widely read ABA Journal, is the first book to explore this movement toward bringing one's soul to the practice of law and returning to lawyering from a healing perspective, rather than an adversarial one. Filled with inspiring profiles of lawyers who have successfully changed their work habits and attitudes and who have healed the split between inner and outer, "us" and "them," and individual and community, Transforming Practices makes it clear that the opportunity for transformation exists for every lawyer, in every kind of law practice. Through the use of narrative, interviews and anecdotes that draw upon the experiences of lawyers from a broad spectrum of practice areas, the book demonstrates that it is okay for a lawyer to be human, to care, to let the values and priorities that matter at home also matter at work.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishing Staff NTC

"In these anxious times, the legal profession has needed a focused discussion on how lawyers can and should balance their professional and personal lives. The lessons in Transforming Practices will inspire and inform that discussion. I commend the ABA Journal for giving the profession this tool to help us be better and happier in our practices." --PHILIP S. ANDERSON, President, The American Bar Association

"Steven Keeva's book is a godsend. It should not only be read, but cherished. The transformative power of his ideas comes like a long-overdue rain to the parched and thirsty desert of our profession's soul." --JAN RICHARD SCHLICHTMANN, Plaintiff's Attorney depicted in Jonathan Harr's A Civil Action

ACCREDITATION