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.