Transformational Lawyer
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I like to think of myself as a “transformational lawyer”, one who teaches his clients to transform their legal problems into opportunities for personal growth and positive change. I do that by inviting them to take 100% responsibility for their lives (to use a Jack Canfield expression).
I ask my clients to choose to believe that the legal situation that they find themselves in is the result of choices they have made in the past, and that when they made those choices they were doing the best they possibly could, given the resources available to them at the time. I also ask my clients to believe that everyone else who has been involved in their lives and in their legal problems has also done the best they possibly could, given the resources available to them.
Now, they are all free to make new choices that may better serve all of them to achieve their respective goals, and to offer others in their lives resources that may have not been available to them before. This way the parties to a legal problem can achieve their goals in a way that is compatible with the other parties’ achieving their goals.
From this perspective, it has been my experience that conflict can be resolved in a synergistic fashion and peace can often be made effortlessly, contributing to the welfare of all involved. Everyone benefits. I call what I do a coach approach to the practice of law, but I don’t think that the name is so important.
Today I call myself both a “peacemaking attorney” and a “transformational lawyer”. Crafting synergistic solutions to legal problems sounds to me like a great way to make peace. What do you think?
Philip J. Daunt, Esq.
Peacemaking Attorney
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“What is a peacemaking attorney?” When asked that question, I am drawn to my own personal experience as an attorney. When I started practicing law some 27 years ago, I thought of myself as a modern-day gunslinger or “hired gun.” As a hired gun, I was using the law either to force someone to do what my client wanted that person to do, or I was protecting my client from being forced to do something someone else wanted them to do that they did not want to do.
As I matured in my practice, I began to see lawyers as “conflict managers” (as opposed to mere hired guns). Transactional lawyers managed potential conflict by drafting agreements in a way that anticipated future conflict and allocated risk among the parties to the agreement; litigators managed actual current conflict as they argued with each other over their respective clients’ rights and responsibilities, and they asked judges, juries and/or arbitrators to resolve the identified conflicts among their respective clients.
I have since come to think of lawyers as having the potential, at least, to be “conflict healers”, helping their clients to resolve conflict in a manner that is for the good of all without focusing on winners and losers and the need to dominate and avoid domination in order to prevail.
Philip J. Daunt, Esq.
A Lawyer’s Fiduciary Duty
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A coach approach to the practice of law works, consistently delivering solutions to clients’ legal problems in less time, with less stress and with superior bottom-line results to those achieved by more traditional methods of legal practice.
The question then arises: is it the lawyer’s fiduciary duty to the client to attempt to apply a coach approach to the client’s legal problems before resorting to the more stressful, combative, antagonistic, blame-based and costly methods that are typically used in a more traditional legal practice? Is it a lawyer’s ethical obligation to the client to expose the client to what some might describe as “Stealth Spirituality” or “Pragmatic Enlightenment” if doing so can result in the client receiving a superior bottom-line result from the lawyer?
Coach Approach Lawyers believe that the answer to these questions is a resounding “Yes.”
Philip J. Daunt, Esq.
Lawyer or Coach? Both!
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During my legal career, I have made a number of observations regarding the predominant legal system that is in use in the United States today. Regardless of the legal setting, it has been my experience that, typically, the participants, (principals and advocates alike), approach the legal process from the perspective that they need to dominate the other parties in order to avoid being dominated themselves. They believe that someone needs to be blamed for a legal situation and that someone had better be someone else. They believe that acknowledging responsibility for a legal situation will result in their “losing” to the other side. Having defined “losing” as anything but dominating and “prevailing” over the other party, they believe that losing means that they have failed, and, therefore, they are “failures,” unworthy of self-respect or self-esteem unless they dominate the other side. The cost of adopting these assumptions, in terms of time, money, stress, relationships and psychological, emotional and physical health, can be enormous.
Some time ago, I reached the conclusion that there had to be a better way. Initially I was led to seek training as a mediator. I then discovered that mediation alone didn’t adequately shift the legal paradigms of the participants. Often the mediators, themselves, hadn’t been trained to abandon the domination model for a partnership model. Without coaching, the participants couldn’t see the advantages to be derived from giving up the need to dominate the other party in order to avoid being dominated by the other party. As a result, they were not open to explore synergistic solutions to their legal problems.
This led me to focus on forming a greater mentorship role with my clients, teaching them the skill sets that they need to have in order to see the possibility of forging solutions to their legal problems – solutions that work for the higher good of all of the participants. This helps them see that they are better served by such solutions than by the solutions made available by the old domination model.
Out of this developed a “Coach Approach to the Practice of Law”. The results can be phenomenal! By taking responsibility and giving up blame, clients can find their true power. They are able to craft solutions to their legal problems that would not have been available under the old paradigm, and they can do so at a fraction of the cost and a fraction of the stress that would have been generated by the old system.
It has been my experience that the Coach Approach to the Practice of Law consistently delivers solutions to clients’ legal problems in less time, with less stress and with superior bottom-line results to those achieved by more traditional methods of legal practice.
Philip J. Daunt, Esq.
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