De Toga op een Kiertje: from intention to ‘mission and vision’

Eventually, at the beginning of 2015, I decided to refer to myself as Holistic lawyer, the run-up I described in blog 1 was unusual: via an accident, many books, reflection, Maui and Israel. And then?

In the spring of 2015, I visited a writers’ workshop and a two-day conference… thereafter I knew how I was to go about it. I would set up a training and an institute incorporating the Holistic Practice, a hub where everyone is welcome, where all the knowledge and people come together. Not only lawyers and mediators, but all the professionals who decide on a holistic approach. It would become a label, a Unique Selling Point. A quality mark clients can trust. A movement for professionals who really want to mean something for their clients, who want to share and heal.

Hub for problem solving
But also for clients who are looking for a professional who sees beyond the narrow path on which legal problems can be placed. For clients who are looking for a professional with a fundamentally positive attitude, with a mission aimed at problem solving, at providing assistance in such a way that you really make progress.

Balance and positive energy
For professionals who want to put a new dot on the horizon, who want to provide their clients with an overall solution and take a proactive approach to a problem. Who are facilitating and willing to involve other disciplines for the benefit of the client. Who let the client’s interest prevail and who understand that dualism does no longer belong in the 21st century. New age lawyers searching for a work-life balance, who want to bring something good to their work, want to cooperate in generating positive energy.

After Chicago, where I spoke with various colleagues in the field of expertise, I knew that this movement had already started in America, that there are people in the world engaged in this way of thinking. People who conduct their legal practice in such a way that they integrate different areas of expertise in their approach.

Integrative Law Movement
My way of working fits in with the Integrative Law Movement. When I was in America, it became clear to me that I am not the only one who wants to work in that way. I was very much inspired by meeting several colleagues who are on the same track, so that, after returning to the Netherlands, I decided to work out this idea in more detail, to start a blog and to plug the idea. Shortly thereafter, I met J Kim Wright in Amsterdam; she is a figurehead of Integrative Law in America, and I learned about her elephant, based on the poem The Elephant of the poet Rumi.

The Elephant

The room is dark
We go in and feel, all of us.

One of us touches a trunk: a hose kind of creature.
another, a leg: no, it is a column.
An ear: a fan.
A back: a leathery throne.

Each of us touches a part,
And understands the whole that way.

What we need is light,
a single candle suffices
and the differences disappear.

The Holistic Practice Hub was born.