Lawyer as healer!

Doctors…still retain a high degree of public confidence because they are perceived as healers. Should lawyers not be healers? Healers, not warriors? Healers, not procurers? Healers, not hired guns?” Warren Burger, Chief Justice, U.S. Supreme Court (1969–1986)

It sounds almost preposterous, the idea of a lawyer being a healer, doesn’t it? If it wasn’t someone as eminent as Warren Burger who suggested it, we might simply laugh and dismiss the idea. My question is, what if we didn’t laugh? What if we were to take the idea seriously?

Actually, the idea of a lawyer as healer is not such a new idea. Robert Benham, former Chief Justice of the Georgia Supreme Court, once noted that the first professions in society were, the clergy, who healed the spirit, the doctor, who healed the body, and the lawyer, who healed the community.

A couple of years ago I spent a few days in the company of an amazing healer, a spry 87 year old called Mike Boxhall (I was sorry to hear he died last year). He explained that when he started out, he used to take the classic healers’ approach — to seek out the cause of the problem and try to get rid of it. Over time, he learned humility, as he gained a deep faith in each person’s innate capacity to heal him or herself. These days he sees his role as providing space in which self-healing can happen.