A Challenged Profession
The rates of alcoholism, substance abuse, depression, burnout, and suicide among attorneys today are among the highest among the professions, and these trends start developing in law school. All of these maladies also involve high co-morbidity with hypertension, diabetes, cardiac illness, some forms of cancer, and various neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer’s. The 2017 Report of the ABA Commission on Lawyer Well-Being suggests the present health statistics may reflect an even deeper cultural crisis of culture.
What if Happiness is an Antidote? At the same time there is mounting scientific evidence that happy lawyers and law firms are also healthier, more creative, and profitable. How can you make this proposition a living reality in your daily practice?
Welcome to The Art of Human-Centered Lawyering
MCLE Webinar Series: The Art of Human Centered Lawyering
3 live webinar hours (including 30 minutes Ethics Hours, 30 minutes Substance Abuse/Mental Illness Hours), approved in California, and pending in other jurisdictions. Certificates of Completion will be issued.
Introduction – Connects the common threads of Big Heart Intelligence, wise decision making, character, resilience, compassion, and effective collaboration.
The Happiness Advantage – (interview with Mark Davis, Esq. managing partner, Davis, Levin, and Livingston) – Module # 1 explores the fundamental idea that happiness is not so much the result of imaginative legal genius and skill, but far more significantly, it is theessential enabling factor of success.
Going Behind the Mask – Module # 2 focuses on the strategic importance of character in human behavior, and the practical uses of deciphering character in complex negotiations and collaborative relationships of all kinds.
Managing Tragic Choices – Module # 3 applies Big Heart Intelligence and “inter-tidal thinking” to government and business decisions that appear to offer huge societal benefits but may also have disastrous consequences. The focus is on government industrial policies to transform global IT infrastructure based on 5G, AI, and an Internet of Things. But the lessons go deeper for how attorneys can make wise decisions and navigate through “tragic choices” in all phases of their professional and personal lives.
Public Advocacy and Big-Hearted Collaboration under the Individuals Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) – Module # 4 proposes a 5 year Moonshot of Compassion in which attorneys can make an extraordinary contribution in helping 7 million children have a chance for a happy life. Attorneys have a unique opportunity to help design a big-hearted framework of collaboration for parents, these children, and school boards based on 50 years of evidence-based science and practice, a visionary statute, the Individuals Disabilities Education Act, and an important U.S. Supreme Court decision.
The Descent, Ascent, and Redemption of Attorney, Laurie Besden (Competence/Substance Abuse) – Module # 5 pinpoints the extraordinary things that can happen, even in the darkest storms, when Self Care is coupled to simple acts of kindness and compassion (Paying Forward).
Self Care as a Principle of Legal Ethics (1/2 hour Legal Ethics) – Module # 6 recognizes that Self–Care is essential for attorneys in performing their obligations to clients, partners, associates, employees, officers of the courts, and society at large. It proposes an amendment to the Code of Professional Responsibility to recognize the principle of Self Care in a way that will strongly support current Lawyer Assistance Programs.
Books and References
- Piloting Through Chaos–The Explorers Mind
- Laughing Heart–A Field Guide to Exuberant Vitality for All Ages–10 Essential Moves (www.alliancesfordiscovery.org)
- Integral Resilience–Helping Communities Thrive (www.resiliencemultiplier.com)
- Big Heart Technologies (www.bighearttechnologies.com)
- Piloting Through Chaos—The Explorers Mind (2013)
Julian Gresser
Career Highlights–International Attorney, Professional Negotiator, Social Innovator, Explorer
Julian Gresser is an international attorney, social entrepreneur, professional negotiator, inventor, and recognized expert on Japan. As a negotiator his most dramatic success involved helping a San Francisco-based trading company transform its $8 million after-tax branch into a $1 billion Japanese company in seven years. This transaction originated by Julian Gresser and his colleague, Professor James E. Schrager, has come to be called “Going Public Japanese Style” adopting the title of an article they jointly authored in the Wall Street Journal. From 1976-1983 he was twice Visiting Mitsubishi Professor at the Harvard Law School and also taught courses as a Visiting Professor at MIT on the legal issues of strategic industries. He has been a Visiting Professor at Beijing University, where he taught seminars on Japanese and U.S. environmental law, and also helped the Chinese environmental authorities draft China’s Marine Pollution Control Law.
In 1981 Julian Gresser co-founded The Pacific Law Group, with offices in Los Angeles and Tokyo, in partnership with another American expert on Japanese law, the former CEO of the Bank of Tokyo, and the former Director of the Tax Bureau of the Ministry of Finance. Julian Gresser has served as legal and business advisor to numerous U.S., Japanese, and European companies on a wide array of business issues, including joint ventures, limited (venture capital) partnerships, technology licensing, export controls and customs fraud, antitrust, and intellectual property protection, particularly patent infringement disputes. He has been a senior consultant to the U.S. State Department, The World Bank, The Prime Minister’s Office of Japan, The People’s Republic of China, and the European Commission (where he trained the Commission’s Japanese negotiating teams). He is the author of eight books in English and Japanese, including most recently two online “living” books and a new series of online courses based on the algorithm of Integral Resilience. MORE
Consulting, In-house Training Engagements, and Participants in Workshops
Endorsements
“The emphasis throughout Piloting Through Chaos is on negotiation, but the analysis and wisdom go well beyond that now available in the literature. This volume is a breakthrough in the use of words, thought processes and managing behavior responsibly.”
– Oliver Oldman, Learned Hand Professor (Emeritus), Harvard Law School
“Julian Gresser assesses some of the fundamental aspects of human behavior. Any negotiator, however experienced, will find new insights in this book.”
– Peter Price, Honorary Member of the European Parliament
“One portfolio company had been mired in negotiations with a foreign company for over a year. In one day’s training, they put together a new plan and team, and three months later closed an OEM agreement worth millions.”
– Dr. Chuck K. Chan, General Partner, Alpine Technology Ventures
“IPOs in China and Japan, inventions in clean energy, decoding Japanese negotiation strategies, incubators for creativity and innovation, the role of beauty in discovery and bringing ideas to market—Julian Gresser is a Renaissance man with an amazing array of achievements and gifts.”
– John Tarrant, Zen master, author, Bring Me the Rhinoceros and other works
“Gresser is an international attorney, but also a 21st Century Renaissance Man, with a lifetime of experience in business, music, martial arts, invention, and meditation.”
– Kenneth Cohen, author of The Way of Qigong and Honoring the Medicine
“Julian Gresser’s work shows with insight, style and imagination how integrity, that most fundamental of human virtues, continues to be vital to success, and even survival, in the ongoing negotiation of life in our rapidly changing world. The added value in Piloting Through Chaos is the author’s suggestions on how integrity can be cultivated by conscious thought and action, and on how core integrity can affect outcomes in a variety of contexts.”
– Peter L. Murray, Visiting Professor of Law, Harvard Law School
“The market is flooded with books and tapes about negotiating, but no one, until now, offers insight into the underlying essence of our interpersonal abilities. This fresh approach, if followed, can be transforming for us as individuals, and as a nation.”
– Claudine Schneider, Former U.S. Congresswoman
“Julian is 100% invested in teaching; an active listener; dedicated to ensuring that the class learns; he is high in energy and empathetic. What would my comments be to future participants? Exciting; out-of-the-box; has life application; fundamental to all relationships.”
– Bobbie Busha, Manager, BellSouth
“We need a cultural revolution as transformative as were the scientific and industrial revolutions. If human culture is to survive without unacceptable impacts on the planetary environment, we must live differently as a culture. This means that the arts and humanities are on the front lines of collaborating with scientists and engineers, we need a ‘second renaissance.’ Julian Gresser, in the second edition of “Piloting through Chaos,” presents a sharply focused methodology for attacking some of the urgent problems and seizing the new opportunities.”
– Roger Malina, Editor, Leonardo
“Julian Gresser is one of those rarest of teachers. He embodies the wisdom that he shares. His pioneering work in negotiation is a quantum leap in human understanding and will move people to their highest level of truth and accomplishment. The value is incalculable, not only to individuals, but to our society.”
– Michael Fitzgerald, Former Director, Washington State Department of Trade & Economic Development
“There is widespread agreement that leadership at any level and in any area requires integrity in the person, the practice, and the profession. It is also clear that this is no easy, simple task, nor can it remain at the mercy of luck, sentimental or institutional formation. Julian Gresser – lawyer, scholar, martial artist, and street-smart practitioner – now makes available the teaching and achievement of integrity in its integral form. As a foundation president, former commissioner, ambassador, and university president, I have had occasion to enlist Julian’s remarkable system and energies. He/it is a godsend for our troubled times and leaders.”
– Dr. Glen A. Olds, U.S. Ambassador to UNESCO
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