The ABA's Legal Rebels is touring the country interviewing extraordinary lawyers. They just published an interview with Cheryl Conner, a wonderful woman who is, in my experience, pretty darn close to being enlightened. She is a Buddhist who taught a course on The Reflective Lawyer at Suffolk University Law School.
Cheryl truly sees our system from the 10,000 foot level. “The way our legal system has developed, with a primary emphasis on being an adversarial system, … it sees that we are all separate and that we focus more on our intellectual sides or our technical or professional sides,” she says. “The holistic approach integrates all the other aspects of human experience that are always present when we are lawyering.”
She views law in the context of evolving relationships, music to my ears. Conner sees the need for change in the law, even changing the U.S. Constitution. “The law is what our last set of agreements was—about how human beings should operate together,” she says. “And we forget the law is just about what we’ve agreed upon, about how our relationships should be. Right now those relationships are still the dynamic. They are evolving.”
My experience of Cheryl is that through her own Buddhist practices and connection with the earth, she has moved through much of the baggage that runs the lives of many of us. She is like a live tuning fork for inspiration and ideas that she is bringing into reality in creative and grounded ways. Right now, she is my hero.
Check out her live interview and her music based on the Declaration of Independence!
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