Guest Speaker at the 2nd UK Therapeutic Jurisprudence and Health Law Conference at Manchester University

Amber Turner, The Holistic Lawyer, is honoured to be invited by Anna Kawalek and Nicola Glover-Thomas as a Guest Speaker at the 2nd UK Therapeutic Jurisprudence and Health Law Conference at Manchester University. Here, Amber will be sharing some of the core features of her 7-Step Model to Holistic Law Practice- part of 'building the new'- away from adversarial, combative, painful spaces towards collaborative, restorative, healing ones.

Abstract: 

Dr Martin Luther King taught, “…peace was not made for the sake of justice, but justice for the sake of peace”. 
 
Adversarial legal systems are built on a misguided belief that human beings are ‘separate’ from each other. Law students, Lawyers and Judges remain largely unaware that it is the pain of unhealed trauma and grief that are the root cause of all injustice. The legal problem or conflict is merely a symptom, a manifestation of this. 
 
In combative court rooms, Clients are re-traumatized, re-stigmatized. The duality, win- lose model’s focus is on retribution: an eye for an eye/ punishment that fits the crime - not on the ‘why’, nor restoration, or healing. The results? Clients reoffend; divorce an abusive partner and attract another toxic relationship; children repeat ‘the sins of the father’, chained in cycles of intergenerational trauma; addicts relapse… The global mental health crisis worsens.
 
Dr Gabor Maté shares that trauma is healed through reconnection. This requires a unity, win-win approach, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” (Matthew 7:12). 
 
A ‘Holistic’ approach offers lawyers and clients the opportunity to restore connection, “believing that the parts of something are intimately interconnected and explicable only by reference to the whole”. 
 
By understanding the legal problem/ conflict not as separate from but instead integral to our client’s state of mind, emotions, body and spirit, Holistic Lawyers integrate and apply in their law practice such values and tools as compassion, non-judgment, mindfulness, meditation, and breath work- to attain justice as peace. 
 
This presentation will highlight some of the core features of The Holistic Lawyer Amber Turner’s innovative 7-Step Model of Holistic Law Practice.