Heart — Creating Legacy Network

Legal Profession Look Out! A Change is A-Comin’!

A great legacy has been born, and I’m proud to be able to announce it! J. Kim Wright’s book “Lawyers As Peacemakers” has been published by the American Bar Association and is now available. We also did a fabulous Creating Legacy Studio interview with Kim, about her legacy journey to this point – “A Legal Rebel’s Legacy Story” – and a recording of it is available for download on The Studio program site.

I’ve been on this journey with Kim since just after the turn of the new millenium (can you say Y2K?) – actually a lot longer than that, only I didn’t know her. We were both restless and somewhat disillusioned with the legal profession. Okay, not so much the profession, or even lawyers themselves, but the system within which we all had to practice. We (and it turns out a number of others) felt there had to be a better way to use the law to serve clients and help make their lives and businesses better. So we started making stuff up, borrowing from other traditions and professions, and fitting these new approaches into the structure of the law.

Yeah, they were teaching negotiation techniques when I went through law school. And mediation – facilitated negotiation providing parties assistance to resolve their own disputes without a third party making the decision for them – was coming on the scene. (This dates me, I know, since most post- college age people have at least heard of mediation and have some sense for what it is – thank God.)

But many of us longed for more civility and more constructive … yes, well, healing, approaches to legal problems. Why should the health care and spiritual professions be the only ones to heal with their work?

The information age being what it was back when Y2K posed what turned out to be not so much threat and disaster as hype (oh and the media has gotten better with the latter since then hasn’t it? But I digress …), the powers that be put me together with Kim Wright and it’s been a totally kindred legal experience ever since. I was retiring from law practice then, to pursue the more developmental and creative sides of what I did with clients - help them prevent legal intrusions, have successful businesses and happy lives, and even make things better in the world. And Kim was, dare I say, hell-bent on improving the way law is practiced: the entire profession.

As a legacy story, this book publication has all the great elements: Kim discovered her passion and interests, knew who she wanted to serve and benefit, figured out a structure that worked for her and has now created a number of artifacts that will persist in producing social good – this book being one of many others and no doubt some to come. And she did it all on a shoe-string with her guts and grit and determination and heart. For her efforts she has already been recognized as one of the ABA’s Legal Rebels for 2009.

Who says a great legacy requires a large financial estate? Even with that, it still takes the underlying guts and grit and determination and heart first – to persist and pursue and bring something beneficial to life.

In the 528 pages of “Lawyers as Peacemakers” Kim provides the reader with the first comprehensive look at the myriad approaches talented and caring lawyers have developed to do just what we were dreaming about when we met. If she hasn’t personally met and interviewed all the pioneers in this movement to tell the stories of how they work together, heal and bring peace to conflict and discord, she knows 99% of them. And she is their — our — champion. Heck, she’s a champion for the entire legal profession and the people it serves – with her help in a more therapeutic way. It is my fervent hope that her impact is huge – even while I recognize how hard it is to turn a ship as large as an entire profession. Even a few degrees on the trim tab, like Kim has made, can make a big difference.

Kim tells me that while writing the book she gathered enough additional information to write a follow up companion to it and not repeat anything she talks about in Lawyers As Peacemakers. I hope it will soon follow her magnificaent first book!

May the positive change continue as others get on board. Cheers, Dolly

It’s Good For You

Research shows that approaching life from a spirit of giving and focus on making a contribution has positive health impacts including improved life-satisfaction, physical and mental health and even living longer. A great legacy created by Sir John Marks Templeton serves to demonstrate – and perpetuate – these benefits.

The name makes him sound like British royalty, and he was created a Knights Bachelor in 1987 for his philanthropic efforts. He was born in the state of Tennessee in the U.S., but lived most of his life in the Bahamas, and is probably best known as the Chartered Financial Analyst who became a billionaire by pioneering the use of globally diversified mutual funds – through his now numerous Templeton Funds for investors.

Beyond his work, however, Templeton’s great interest was in spirituality, and he built a great legacy based on it. In 1972, he established the Templeton Prize to honor individuals who make “an exceptional contribution to affirming life’s spiritual dimension, whether through insight, discovery, or practical works” as stated on the organization’s website. He called recipients “entrepreneurs of the spirit,” and the first prize was given in 1973 to Mother Teresa of Calcutta, who received $85,000 for her charities. Based on sound management, the prize has grown to around $1.6 million annually.

To administer the prize, in 1987 Templeton established the John Templeton Foundation. It now awards around sixty million dollars every year to institutions and people for spiritual and scientific activities that explore values such as the nature of love, gratitude, forgiveness, and creativity – in an effort to reconcile science and religion without diminishing either. The Foundation made the prize and other grant-making activities sustainable, and though Templeton passed from this earth in 2008, his legacy is still very much alive.

In 2001, the Institute for Research on Unlimited Love was founded with a grant from the foundation. It studies unselfish love and the benefits of giving back. The institute’s most recent report “It’s Good to be Good 2009: Health and the Generous Heart” is available on the site. The report details that developing a generous way of being and then doing or giving from that state indeed has benefits for the giver.

I mention Templeton not to emphasize what someone with billions can do – most people readily get that, but think they cannot do something similar. Maybe not at the same scale, but you can do something that will be as important for the recipient of your efforts.

Rather, I provide this example to show how one person, during his lifetime, used his career and his wealth to really address the things he was passionate about. I also provide the example to demonstrate that there are funds available for all kinds of great projects to benefit people and the planet. Creating legacy is not just about disseminating wealth, but about your authentic interest and willingness to act from there. That’s the foundation from which all great legacies are built.

It’s Good For You

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