“What is a peacemaking attorney?”
When asked that question, I am drawn to my own personal experience as an attorney. When I started practicing law some 27 years ago, I thought of myself as a modern-day gunslinger or “hired gun.” As a hired gun, I was using the law either to force someone to do what my client wanted that person to do, or I was protecting my client from being forced to do something someone else wanted them to do that they did not want to do.
As I matured in my practice, I began to see lawyers as “conflict managers” (as opposed to mere hired guns). Transactional lawyers managed potential conflict by drafting agreements in a way that anticipated future conflict and allocated risk among the parties to the agreement; litigators managed actual current conflict as they argued with each other over their respective clients’ rights and responsibilities, and they asked judges, juries and/or arbitrators to resolve the identified conflicts among their respective clients.
I have since come to think of lawyers as having the potential, at least, to be “conflict healers”, helping their clients to resolve conflict in a manner that is for the good of all without focusing on winners and losers and the need to dominate and avoid domination in order to prevail.
Philip J. Daunt, Esq.
