Doug Ammar



Gathering of the Project on Integrating Spirituality, Law, and Politics

Atlanta, Georgia 2004

Participants – Contact and Biographical Information

(alphabetical by last name)

Douglas B. Ammar

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

GEORGIA JUSTICE PROJECT

438 Edgewood Ave

Atlanta, GA 30312

Telephone: (404) 827-0027 (x28); Fax: (404) 827-0026

Web:

Email: doug@

Raised in Charleston, West Virginia, Doug graduated from Washington & Lee University School of Law in 1989, and Davidson College in 1984. Throughout the years he volunteered at the Georgia Justice Project (GJP), described below, and in 1990 joined the staff as the second project attorney. Five years later he became the second Executive Director of the GJP.

Atlanta attorney John Pickens started the Georgia Justice Project in 1986. His purpose was to find a way to integrate his faith as a Christian with his practice as a lawyer. The GJP is an unlikely mix of lawyers, social workers and a landscaping company. They defend people charged with crimes, and, win or lose, they stand with their clients as they rebuild their lives. This, they feel, is the only way to break the cycle of crime and poverty. The GJP is an innovative nonprofit organization whose services include legal representation, prison visitation, GED classes, individual counseling and support groups, and monthly support dinners. GJP also operates a small business (New Horizon Landscaping) to employ its released clients.

Doug is married to Melissa Alves and has two sons (Conor, 5 years old, and Micah, 15 months).

Rhonda V. Magee Andrews

PROFESSOR OF LAW

University of San Francisco School of Law

2130 Fulton Street

San Francisco, CA 94117

Telephone: (415) 422-5055

Email: andrewsr@usfca.edu

I teach law from the perspective of a Black woman with the heart and soul of a native Southerner and the spirit of an adopted San Franciscan. I was born and raised in the South – North Carolina and Virginia – and attended the University of Virginia for degrees in Sociology (B.A. and M.A.) and law. I chose San Francisco as my home following my formal education, because of its famous openness and, it seemed to me, traditional countercultural stand in favor of human possibility.

Following a stint as a practitioner representing some of the country’s largest insurance companies in insurance contract disputes with some of the world’s biggest environmental polluters, I began teaching at the University of San Francisco, where I received tenure in 2003. I teach Torts; Insurance Law and Policy; and Race, Law and Policy, and write in these areas as well. In all of my teaching and writing I have been working toward the articulation of a jurisprudential perspective that I did not find as a law student – one oriented fundamentally around a deep appreciation of our common humanity and mindful of our perpetual personal struggles to fully actualize that common spirit in engaged community with others, notwithstanding the increasing alienation and perennial evil in the midst of our ordinary human lives. In this I have been profoundly inspired by the examples of Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Cornel West, Mari Matsuda, Cecil Williams, and Peter Gabel.

This Fall I am Visiting Professor of Law at William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, one of the oldest multicultural communities in North America, where I am roaming the Virginia in which I came of age and finding new and old inspiration for my teaching and writing. I look forward to being with all of you in Atlanta.

Nora Kalb Bushfield

1756 Century Blvd., Suite B

Atlanta, Georgia 30345

Telephone: (o) (404) 248-1444; Fax: (404) 248-1464

Web:

Email: nora@

Nora Kalb Bushfield is a sole practitioner in Atlanta, Georgia, and has specialized in the area of family law since 1986. A member of the Collaborative Law Institute of Georgia, Nora also serves on the steering committee for the Institute and has assisted with training for the Collaborative Law Institute. In addition to her law practice, she is a trained divorce and child custody mediator registered with the state ADR office and a member of the Georgia Association of Family Mediators. Bar memberships include the State Bar of Georgia, Family Law Section and Alternate Dispute Resolution Section; and the DeKalb and Atlanta Bar Associations. Relevant training includes Divorce & Child Custody Mediation and Collaborative Divorce.

Nora received her undergraduate degree from Georgia State University with a major in psychology; a Master of Social Work (M.S.W.) from Atlanta University, and her Juris Doctor from Antioch School of Law.

Prior to attending law school, Nora was a family and individual therapist at what is now know as Family’s First. While in Washington, D.C., Nora was National Project Director for several action, research, and demonstration programs in the area of juvenile justice, child welfare, and child abuse and neglect, as well as assisting in the writing of National Standards in Foster Care and Child Abuse and Neglect.

Nora is committed to the exclusive practice of Collaborative Law and to promoting the collaborative law process throughout Georgia. Nora is a member of the Steering Committee of the Collaborative Law Center of Georgia, the Board of Directors of the Collaborative Law Center of Atlanta, President of the International Alliance of Holistic Lawyers, and President of Collaborative Law Training Associates, Inc.

Kathleen Anne Clark

3 Royston Walk

Pleasant Hill, CA 94523

Telephone: (925) 280-7222; (925) 708-8227

Email: kathleenclark@

coachkac@

I have practiced law since 1988 in the areas of civil litigation and dispute resolution. In 2000, I received a Master of Arts degree in business management/organizational development. Since receiving my MA, I’ve done consulting, coaching and writing on a broad range of OD topics, including Appreciative Inquiry. An article that I wrote on Appreciative Inquiry For Attorneys will be published this month in the ABA Law Practice Management on line magazine. I am working, with another California attorney, on MCLE programs to be offered through the State Bar of California in the area of Appreciative Inquiry for attorneys. I’m preparing for a trip to South Africa in November, 2004, with the Association for Conflict Resolution to discuss truth and reconciliation, mediation, and community building with like-minded people in South Africa. Finally, I’m preparing to go to Miami-Dade in November to be an election monitor and volunteering to work for the 9-11 Public Discourse Project.

CHERYL L. CONNER, M.A., J.D.

New Prospects

334 Geary Road,

Lincoln, Vermont 05443

(802)453-8500



Email: clccounselor@

I am a lawyer and economist who has practiced law in the Boston area since graduation from Harvard in 1982. I was a litigator in the private sector, at Goodwin, Procter, and in the public sector, as an Assistant U.S. Attorney for the District of Massachusetts and as an Assistant Attorney General for Massachusetts. My other public sector positions include Senate Counsel to the Massachusetts Legislature's Commerce and Labor Committee and Issues Director for a Democratic Gubernatorial Campaign. As an economist trained at the University of Michigan, I have done consulting and research in the regulated industries area at Charles River Associates and the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard.

In my recent position teaching at Suffolk University Law School, in Boston, I was Director of the Clinical Internship Program. I coordinated a program in which 150-200 students per year provide pro bono legal work for organizations in New England under the supervision of 15 Suffolk Law School faculty. I taught seminars in which students reflect upon their field experience and attempt to integrate doctrine, skills, professional ethical sensibilities, and personal values. As an adjacent faculty member, I teach an unconventional course, "Reflective Lawyer: Peace-training for Lawyers", which guides students in how to integrate a contemplative approach with their field experience practicing law. Through teaching meditation and contemplative techniques and in spurring a non-judgmental discussion about integrating spiritual values and law practice, I have found that my students are fully engaged.

I speak widely about integrating spiritual values and perspectives within law practice, about holistic law and restorative justice. My perspective is informed by studies and practice under the guidance of His Eminence Chagdud Tulku Rinpoche, a great master of Tibetan Buddhism. I founded a group of Lawyers with a Holistic Perspective in Boston, Massachusetts, and co-ordinate a Tibetan Buddhist meditation group called Sang Ngag Ling. My forthcoming book is entitled Going out of Our LEGAL Minds.

Clark Cunningham

W. Lee Burge Professor of Law & Ethics

Georgia State University College of Law

P.O. Box 4037

Atlanta, GA  30302-4037

Telephone: (404) 651-1242; Fax: (404) 651-2092

Home Page: law.wustl.edu/Academics/Faculty/Cunningham/cunningham.html

Email: cdcunningham@gsu.edu

Upon graduation from college in 1975, Clark joined VISTA (Volunteers in Service to America, the domestic Peace Corps) and was assigned to work with a tenants advocacy organization in the inner city of Detroit.  He organized the group into a nonprofit corporation, raised ongoing funding, and served as its first executive director before beginning law school in 1977. He continued to live in the same inner city neighborhood until 1987, during which time he completed law school, worked for a federal judge, was a legal aid lawyer, and a civil rights litigator for a private firm.  He was also an active community organizer at the neighborhood, city and state level -- creating a nonprofit housing corporation that saved several apartment buildings from abandonment, working on a successful city-wide campaign to shift funding from downtown development to neighborhoods and nonprofit organizations, and serving as the first secretary of the Michigan Housing Trust Fund.

In 1987 Clark joined the faculty of the University of Michigan law school as an assistant clinical professor of law.  In 1989 he was hired into a tenure-track position at Washington University in St. Louis where he directed the Urban Law Clinic (1989-94) and the Criminal Justice Clinic (1995-98). On June 1, 2002 he became the first holder of the W. Lee Burge Chair in Law and Ethics at Georgia State University in Atlanta, where his

first projects have been to develop materials for the state commission on indigent defense and to work on a proposal to develop a multi disciplinary law-and-medicine program to serve low-income children and their families through collaboration with a major hospital.

He has consulted around the world on reform in legal education and has been a visiting scholar at the Indian Law Institute, Sichuan University (China), the University of Sydney (Australia), University of Palermo (Argentina), and the National Law School of India. He directed a three-year Ford Foundation project to support the development of human rights clinics in Indian law schools and was one of two Americans to serve on the first steering

committee of the Global Alliance for Justice Education. He currently directs the Effective Lawyer-Client Communication Project, an international collaboration of law teachers, lawyers, and social scientists.

Margaret B. Drew

477 Washington Street

Norwood, MA 02062

Telephone: (781) 255-9595

Email: mbdrew@

Margaret has practiced law since 1980. Most of her professional career has been devoted to representing victims of domestic violence. She has represented clients in the family law and appellate courts of Massachusetts.

During the course of her practice, Margaret realized that the most important aspect of her work with victims was to incorporate spiritual healing into every aspect of her representation. After spending a year as a supervising attorney at Northeastern University School of Law’s domestic violence clinic, she is now an adjunct professor there, teaching courses related to domestic violence. Margaret Chairs the American Bar Association’s Commission on Domestic Violence. Margaret is a reiki master in the lineage of Jin Kei Do, which is the way of wisdom and compassion.

Daisy Hurst Floyd

DEAN AND PROFESSOR OF LAW

Walter F. George School of Law, Mercer University

1021 Georgia Ave.

Macon, GA 31207-0001

Telephone: (478) 301-2602

Email: Floyd_dh@mercer.edu

Daisy Hurst Floyd is Dean and Professor of Law at Mercer University’s Walter F. George School of Law. She received a B.A. and M.A. from Emory University and a J.D. from the University of Georgia School of Law. Daisy’s teaching and research interests include litigation-related topics, the development of professional identity, and legal education. She has participated in three projects of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, including two projects focused on the development of professional identity in American law students, and one related to the interdisciplinary study of professional education. She was named a Carnegie Scholar in 2001-2002. Daisy is a member of the State Bars of Georgia and Texas. She is a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation and the Texas Bar Foundation.

Daisy is married to Tim Floyd. They have two children. Kate, 22, is a student at Candler School of Theology at Emory University, and Will, 18, is a freshman at Sarah Lawrence College.

Tim Floyd

Professor

Georgia State University College of Law

443 Urban Life Center

140 Decatur Street, SE

Atlanta, GA 30303

Telephone: (404) 651-1231

Email: lawtwf@langate.gsu.edu

Tim Floyd is Visiting Professor of Law at Georgia State University College of Law in Atlanta, where he is teaching Criminal Procedure and Criminal Law during the 2004-05 school year. This fall, Tim is also working with Clark Cunningham and Doug Ammar in the newly established Georgia State College of Law Criminal Defense Clinic, which is conducted under the auspices and in conjunction with the Georgia Justice Project.

Tim and his wife Daisy moved to Georgia in the summer of 2004 after fifteen years together on the faculty at Texas Tech University School of Law. At Texas Tech, Tim was the J. Hadley Edgar Professor of Law and Co-Director of Clinical Programs. He established three clinical courses, including an innovative interdisciplinary Family Law Counseling Clinic conducted together with the Marriage and Family Therapy program at Texas Tech. Tim also taught criminal law courses, various lawyering skills courses, and seminars in legal ethics and law and literature.

One of Tim’s principal commitments and passion is in the defense of capital punishment cases. He recently spent eight years representing Louis Jones, Jr., the first person convicted under the Federal Death Penalty Act of 1994. As of January 2005, Tim will be working part-time with the new Georgia Capital Defenders program, supervising law students and serving as a general resource person for the program.

Tim has a long-standing interest in spirituality and religious faith in the practice of law. He served as editor of the Faith and Law Symposium issue of the Texas Tech Law Review, a ground-breaking project that brought together 45 essays by lawyers from a wide range of spiritual traditions, all of whom discussed how their religious faith intersected with their work as lawyers. Tim has also spoken at several conferences on spirituality and the practice of law.

Among Tim’s other interests are access to justice issues: he served as an original member of the Texas Access to Justice Commission (on which he led an effort to establish a loan forgiveness program for new public interest lawyers); he was a long-term member of the Boards of Directors of the Texas Legal Services Center and of West Texas Legal Services; and he established a pro bono legal clinic through his church in Lubbock, Texas. Tim has also spent much time working on issues of lawyer discipline and regulation. He chaired the Supreme Court of Texas Lawyer Grievance Oversight Committee and was one of the principal drafters of the Texas Rules of Disciplinary Procedure.

Over the next year, Tim will be working on two major writing projects. He will be assisting Judge Phyllis Kravitch of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit (and the third woman in history appointed to the U.S. Court of Appeals) in writing her memoirs. Tim is also writing a book about his relationship with Louis Jones and the story of his execution.

Tim and Daisy live in Macon, Georgia. Daisy is the Dean of Walter F. George School of Law of Mercer University. Their daughter Kate plans to be a pastor and theologian and is a first-year student at Candler School of Theology of Emory University. Their son Will is a budding playwright and is a first-year student at Sarah Lawrence College in New York.

Zvi Gabbay

Doctoral student, Columbia University School of Law

792 Columbus Ave. #4-O

New York, NY 10025

Telephone: (212) 662-0950

Email: zdg2101@columbia.edu

Zvi Gabbay is a lawyer and mediator from Israel, who is currently conducting research in the area of restorative justice and alternatives to the criminal justice system in the Columbia University School of Law. He received his law degree from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and worked for the Tel Aviv District Attorney’s Office between 1998 and 2003 as a prosecutor. During his work at the DA’s office, Zvi began mediating civil cases, and teaching mediation courses.

Zvi’s work as prosecutor in criminal cases and mediator in civil cases challenged him to think of ways to combine the two worlds, and search for a more companionate and meaningful response to crime. Zvi dedicated his master’s degree from Columbia to the research of restorative justice practices in the United States, and will be continuing his studies towards a J.S.D. degree (the equivalent of a Ph.D. in law) in this interdisciplinary area of research.

Zvi is currently living in Manhattan with his wife and two daughters. He is active in the Jewish community as a tutor for young boys and girls, preparing them for their bar/bat mitzvah, and as a synagogue cantor.

Peter Gabel

New College of California

777 Valencia Street

San Francisco, California 94110

Telephone: (o) (415) 282-7197; Fax: (415) 593-0506

(h) (415) 642-9420

Email: pgabel@newcollege.edu

Peter Gabel is Director of the Institute for Spirituality and Politics at New College of California. He served as President of New College for twenty years and has been a professor at New College’s Public Interest Law School since 1975. A founder of the Critical Legal Studies movement and author of many law review articles on law, politics, and social change, Peter is also the co-founder with Michael Lerner of the Politics of

Meaning movement. He is currently Associate Editor of Tikkun magazine, a progressive Jewish bi-monthly. He is part of a wider community of friends and coworkers who strive to remain true to the insights and ideals of the 1960s that first united them. His collected writings on the Politics of Meaning can be found in The Bank Teller and Other Essays on the Politics of Meaning (Acada Books/New College Press, 2000). He received his B.A. and J.D. from Harvard University in 1968 and 1972, respectively, and his Ph.D. in Social-Clinical Psychology from the Wright Institute in 1981.

Peter lives with his partner, Lisa Jaicks, an organizer for the Hotel and Restaurant Workers who is currently directing the union's child-care/elder-care program. They have a nine-year old son, Sam, and live in San Francisco.

Sarah L. Gerwig

Staff Attorney, Appellate Division

Georgia Public Defender Standards Council

104 Marietta Street, Suite 200

Atlanta, GA 30303

Telephone: (404) 232-8900

Email: sarahgerwig@

I am excited to reconnect with this group, as the meeting at the Marconi Center was incredibly powerful and meaningful for me. With new motherhood, my world has gotten smaller and more simple; the implications of violence, hatred, bigotry, and injustice feel much more personal. I still hope for my son Dean—and for all sons and daughters—that the world will become kinder, more connected, and that I will be able to teach my son about the best of humanity: love, compassion, empathy, peaceful work toward community growth.

In my profession, I continue to represent poor prisoners in their appeals, working more now with helping other attorneys’ appellate practice than with clients themselves. This is obviously good work, but sometimes lacks the “human element” that I like most about lawyering, and I struggle to insert direct contact with clients wherever I can. I also lead a pro bono project with Emory Law School students to involve them in briefing the non-capital pro se habeas appeals that come before the Georgia Supreme Court each year. The project has allowed me to work with and teach several bright young law students and to talk to them about what kind of lawyers they hope to be—how they intend to keep centered, happy, and committed to social justice. This is the best part of my job, and the most rewarding, particularly as the Project has been very successful legally, as well!

I have a BA from Mercer University and earned my JD and MTS (Master of Theological Studies) in the Law and Religion Program at Emory University. While in graduate school, I focused especially upon restoration and reconciliation, as a student of the Archbishop Desmond Tutu and later in South Africa. My master’s thesis examined, from both legal and moral perspectives, the religious practice of men on California’s Condemned Row. I am now a staff attorney in the Appellate Division of the Georgia Public Defender Standards Council (Georgia’s new statewide public defender office), where I handle direct appeals and habeas petitions in non-capital cases.

George Jurand

Program Director

P.O. Box 907

San Bruno CA.94066

Telephone: (650) 266-9344

Email: Jur@

George Jurand currently is the Program Coordinator for The San Francisco Sheriff's Department: he directs Roads to Recovery and Resolve to Stop the Violence Project at county jail # 7. George is a Certified Restorative Justice Trainer for Florida Atlantic University, Certified Substance Abuse Counselor, Certified Adult Teacher: Certified Relapse Prevention Specialist: co-Founder of TARTAC Batterers Intervention Program: Board of Director Operation Contact: Board of Director Allied Fellowship Service: Coordinator City of Hope Transformative Mentor Program.

Paul R. Lehto

Former Member, Board of Governors

Washington State Bar Association (2001-2003)

Partner, Lehto & Penfield, PLLC

PO Box 1091, Everett, WA 98206-1091

Telephone: (425) 257-2297; Email: Paul@

Founder, CopyCare Copying Services: A nonprofit business

PO Box 1091, Everett, WA 98206-1091

Telephone: (425) 257-2297; Email:

First elected to the Board of Governors of the Washington State Bar Association in the fall of 2001, Paul is endeavoring to gear his law firm, his nonprofit business CopyCare, and results of his service on the Board of Governors toward the vision set forth at the August 2001 retreat of the Project on the Integration of Spirituality, Law, and Politics held at the Sleeping Lady conference center in Leavenworth, Washington. At the founding retreat, Paul served as local organizer along with his intern at the time, George Kao from the University of Michigan School of Law, while many provided the content and spirit of the event.

Paul's background includes a stint in the state senate in Michigan, campaign management experience for a portion of a congressional district, and volunteer positions in various national parks around the country. Perhaps even more formative to Paul's spirit were the lesser-known tunes of John Denver, who always evoked a broadly spiritual approach to the world. Other musical additions include the music of Michael Franti of Spearhead, who also evokes a broad spiritual approach to politics and life (Michael Franti and

Paul are cousins).

In his law firm, Paul encourages the development of all of his staff to their highest purposes through sabbatical time available through profit-sharing. On the Bar Association level, Paul has been a voice for healing in the practice of law, writing in the Bar News and speaking to groups as diverse as the assembled Governors of the Bar

Associations of the western United States at a convention in Las Vegas in March 2002, to schools and classrooms, as well as to Bar Association events in the state of Washington.

Paul is a 1987 graduate of Northern Michigan University, with a B.S. in Biology, and a 1995 cum laude graduate from Seattle University School of Law, where he was named to the Order of Barristers. Paul's litigation practice includes one published contract law case reported at 90 Wn.App. 638 (1998) and his business litigation practice includes a concentration in plaintiff consumer protection actions.

Paul's wife Karita is from Finland, and their children Iida (3) and Jonah (1) reside in Lake Stevens, Washington. It's a bilingual household where children remind us that a childlike sense of wonder and enthusiasm is so powerful that it enables even little children to simultaneously master two languages without formal instruction, just because Dad speaks English and Mom speaks Finnish.

David M. Lerman

Assistant District Attorney

Director, Community Conferencing Program

Milwaukee, WI

Telephone: (414) 278-4655

lerman.david@mail.da.state.wi.us

David Lerman has been an Assistant District Attorney for Milwaukee County since 1988. He received his JD from the University of Wisconsin Law School and Master of Science in Industrial Relations from the UW Institute of Industrial Relations in 1984. He has earned additional certificates from the Community Justice Institute, Florida Atlantic University, as a Restorative Justice Trainer; and Harvard University’s Program of Instruction for Lawyers in mediation. Mr. Lerman has also practiced law in Israel.

Mr. Lerman is the Restorative Justice Coordinator for the Milwaukee County District Attorney’s Office. He directs the Community Conferencing Program and the Neighborhood Initiative. He also chairs the Milwaukee County Task Force on Restorative Justice. He has presented workshops on Restorative Justice for various types of audiences throughout the United States. He has published articles on general Restorative Justice issues as well as the nexus between Jewish Law and Restorative Justice. He has created and delivered a curriculum on Restorative Justice for the University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee Criminal Justice Program.

David lives in Milwaukee with his wife and three daughters. He is active in the Jewish community through his membership in the Reconstructionist synagogue Shir Hadash and the American Jewish Committee.

Robyn Lundy

250 Cambridge Avenue

Kensington, CA 94708

Telephone: (o) (510) 644-1200; (h) (510) 528-9147

Cell: (510) 684-6772

Email: robyn@

Robyn Lundy is the Executive Director of the Tikkun Community in Berkeley, California. Before joining Tikkun in early 2003, Robyn worked as a plaintiff's class action lawyer for Milberg Weiss Bershad Hynes & Lerach in New York City. At Milberg Weiss Robyn worked exclusively on lawsuits representing doctors and patients against HMOs and published an article on the status of HMO litigation nationwide in 2002. During law school, Robyn, along with several other law students founded and incorporated a nonprofit organization called PLEDJE, Project for Legal and Economic Development, Justice and Equality which helped link law students with various volunteer legal projects in the local community.

Robyn earned a BA at Duke University in 1995 and her JD from the University of Miami Law School in 1999. Between college and law school, Robyn traveled extensively in Southeast Asia, Africa, South America, and the Middle East. Robyn was born in South Africa, where most of her family still lives, and has lived in New Jersey, Durham, North Carolina, London, Miami, Atlanta, New York, and San Francisco, before moving to Berkeley.

Debrenia Madison

DEAN

New College of California School of Law

50 Fell Street

San Francisco, California 94102

Telephone: (415) 241-1325; Fax: (415) 241-1353

Email: madison@newcollege.edu

I have held the position of Dean of New College of California School of Law for approximately 8 years. I came to this position after practicing education and housing law for over a decade.

My hopes and aspirations at the time were to use my experience and expertise in advocacy and mediation to assist law students to navigate through the maze of legal studies with the hope that they would graduate and use their newly acquired knowledge to serve and transform their communities and the world. I am happy to say that New College's mission statement supported my aspirations and our program today is designed to educate public interest minded law students to enter the legal profession without losing their humanity in the process.

My experience in alternative dispute resolution spans over 15 years. I have served in various capacities, including the following: mediator, arbitrator, Judge Pro Tem, counselor, facilitator, and advocate. Also, I have worked as an attorney in private practice and for a nonprofit corporation prior to holding the position of Dean of New College's Law Program.

Mark L. Perlmutter

1717 W. 6TH ST., SUITE 375

Austin, Texas 78703

Telephone: (o) 512-476-4944; Fax: 512-476-6218

(h) 512-467-2498

Email: mlp@

A certified civil trial lawyer with Perlmutter & Schuelke in Austin, Texas, Mark Perlmutter’s practice focuses on professional negligence, business disputes, class actions and serious injury cases, as well as mediation. He has lectured extensively on jury selection, professionalism, and the DTPA for the State Bar, University of Houston, University of Texas, and South Texas law schools, helped write the Texas Lawyers Creed, and is a former President of the Travis County Bar and Volunteer Legal Services of Central Texas. His recent activities include chairing the State Bar of Texas

Professionalism Committee, trial consulting, serving as an Adjunct Professor at the University of Texas School of Law, and co-producing Lifetime Television’s Scared Silent, a movie based on one of his cases.

Honored as a legal innovator by The Texas Lawyer for his "Trialmasters" course,and as a “superlawyer” by Texas Monthly Magazine, he continues to speak on his book, Why Lawyers (and the rest of us) Lie and Engage in Other Repugnant Behavior. His education includes a bachelors degree in communication from Northwestern University and a law degree from the University of Texas. He has also been trained as a group facilitator by The Foundation of Community of Encouragement.

Marty Price

MAILING: P. O. BOX 306, ASHEVILLE, NC 28802

Office: The Flat Iron Building, Suite 708;

20 Battery Park Avenue, Asheville, NC 28801

Telephone: (o) (828) 253-3355; Fax: (828) 255-3315

Home: 306 North Fork Road

Black Mountain, NC 28711

Telephone: (h) (828) 664-0363; Cell: (971) 404-7011;

Web: and

Email: martyprice@ or martyprice@

Marty Price is an attorney and social worker who has worked as a mediator for over 20 years. (His first training was with Gary Friedman, and the Center for Mediation in Law, in 1981). Previously practicing law in Michigan, he was a pioneer, transforming his domestic relations litigation practice into a non-adversarial family law practice, offering peaceful and collaborative resolutions in divorces, child custody and visitation, child abuse and neglect, juvenile delinquency, adoption and guardianship cases. Marty was a co-founder of the Michigan Mediation Association, which allied lawyer-mediators and mental health therapist-mediators to do interdisciplinary team mediation in family law disputes.

Marty was an administrator and an Adjunct Faculty member at Wayne County Community College, in Detroit. While residing in Michigan, he served on the board of directors of The Haven, a shelter for victims of domestic violence and he provided pro bono legal representation for clients of The Haven.

Marty has been involved in cutting-edge mediation with victims and offenders for the past thirteen years. He is the founder and director of the Victim-Offender Reconciliation Program (VORP) Information and Resource Center. He is also the founder and former director of the VORP of Clackamas County, Oregon and has served on the Board of the VORP of Multnomah County.

He is a former board member and Co-Chair of the Victim-Offender Mediation Association (VOMA), a nonprofit, international, educational and advocacy organization that promotes Restorative Justice and supports victim-offender mediation and reconciliation programs. Marty holds Juris Doctor (Doctor of Law) and Bachelor of Social Work degrees from Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan.

Specializing in victim-offender mediation in homicide cases and other crimes of severe violence, Marty Price provides consultation and training to victim-offender mediation programs throughout the United States and abroad. He has presented his work on the mediation of seriously violent offenses at conferences on the treatment and prevention of crime, both nationally and internationally. He served on the faculty of the National Restorative Justice Training Institute Advanced Training for the Mediation of Seriously Violent Crimes at the University of Minnesota School of Social Work (1996).

Marty has served as a consultant and trainer to victim-offender mediation programs in most of the United States, the Territory of Guam, in Mexico, and in Central and South America. He is frequently consulted by the media, most recently providing his expertise to Oprah, A&E, the Discover Channel, Faith and Values Media, and ABC News. He has appeared on ABC 20/20 and other television media. His articles have been published in numerous professional journals. His groundbreaking mediation work with drunk-driving fatality cases has been recognized internationally and one of his cases is being considered for a Hollywood movie.

After combining his restorative justice work with teaching in public schools for several years, in fall of 2002 Marty Price returned to working with divorce clients in a Portland law firm. There he began to work with Kim Wright. (See Kim's bio.) In 2003, he and Kim left the firm and created Healers of Conflicts. They relocated to North Carolina in Summer, 2004.

Perry Saidman

PRINCIPAL, SAIDMAN DESIGNLAW GROUP

1110 BONIFANT STREET, SUITE 510

SILVER SPRING, MD 20910

TELEPHONE: (301) 585-8601; FAX: (301) 585-0138

EMAIL: PERRY.SAIDMAN@

I have been in the private practice of intellectual property law for over 30 years. After starting and building a law firm from 3 to 75 people in the 80s, I left the stress behind (so I thought) to go solo in 1990. After having written and spoken on the evils of competition at the Washington Ethical Society (WES) in 1993, I discovered the politics of meaning at the Summit in Washington in 1996 and felt tremendously inspired and energized. I attended the inaugural meeting of the Law Task Force (LTF) that summer at the Marconi Conference Center in Pt. Reyes, California, and have been a member of the LTF since then. Later, I helped Peter Gabel and Michael Lerner incorporate the Foundation for Ethics and Meaning, and served for a brief time as its first chair. Since then, I have written and spoken twice at WES about the politics of meaning generally, and about the Law Task Force in particular.

I am committed to the manifesto of our LTF, as embodied in our Declaration of Legal Renewal, and still believe that I can bring greater meaning to my life by working in some manner towards transforming the legal system. I feel stuck, however, in that I have to make a living. More than that, I sense that I am somewhat addicted to the high level of materialism that I’ve enjoyed over the years. Also, it’s hard to give up a private practice that I’ve worked so hard over the years to build up.

My continuing struggle is to figure out just how to transform my private practice of law into a daily, meaningful experience that would be a reflection of my most deeply held beliefs. At the moment, I am a far cry from that integrated concept, although I have recently begun to market myself as a mediator/early neutral evaluator to bring ADR to my specialty, design law. Until that takes hold, my goal is simply to create a parallel universe, i.e., to try and work less within the system, and thereby leave more time to work towards achieving LTF goals.

Nanette Schorr

LSNY-Bronx

369 E. 148th Street

Bronx, NY 10455

Work: (718) 928-3764

Home: (516) 829-2819

NHSchorr@

Nanette Schorr is the supervising attorney of the family and education law unit at the Legal Services of New York office in the Bronx, work she has done for the past 16 years. She practices family law regularly in the Bronx Family Court, where she represents family members in child protective cases, seeking to reunite parents with their children who are in foster care. She has acted as a trainer on many occasions for attorney advocates, and teaches an interdisciplinary seminar on child welfare issues at Fordham University's School of Law. She is the coordinator of the Legal Task Force on law and meaning affiliated with the Foundation for Ethics and Meaning (), and is also the co-chair of the Foundation. She has written for Tikkun magazine, including an article on foster care and its relationship to issues of poverty, and also on transforming the practice of law in ways that bring more compassion and healing into the legal process.

John Spiegel

204 Monroe Street Suite 207

Rockville, Maryland 20850

Telephone:(301) 340-1811

Email:mediator@

John Spiegel, an attorney and educator, has a private divorce mediation practice in Rockville, Maryland and runs a specialized divorce mediation program at Jewish Family Services in Baltimore. Prior to becoming a mediator, John worked as staff attorney for the District of Columbia Superior Court, where he trained hundreds of lawyers to represent children and parents in child abuse and neglect cases. He also taught juvenile law at The Washington College of Law (The American University).Now John trains psychotherapists to be divorce mediators through a program he initiated at the University of Maryland School of Social Work. He has lectured nationally concerning divorce mediation for Jewish couples. The father of four children, John has extensive experience in peer counseling and has led support groups for parents and for men. Currently he serves as President of the Maryland Council for Dispute Resolution, a state-wide organization of conflict resolution professionals.

Dianna Stallone

36 Berkshire Terrace

Florence, MA 01062

Email: fire5587@

Dianna Stallone is a trial attorney, practicing in the areas of civil rights, medicine, and constitutional law for 19 years.  After working at several large law firms in Minneapolis and Boston, Dianna established her own law office in 1991.  Dianna was appointed as a Civil Rights Commissioner for the City of Minneapolis and served on the Civil Rights Commission for two years.  She also served on the Board of Directors for the Lawyer's

International Human Rights Committee -- a group consisting at the time of over six hundred lawyers nationally.  In 1998 she founded The Center For Social Justice, Inc., a nonprofit arts/justice organization and she serves as its Executive Director.

The mission of the Center For Social Justice is to explore justice issues through intuitive, spiritual and/or artistic means.  She is also a member of the Tikkun Community and the Tikkun Lawyer's group.  Last year, Dianna opened the first Tikkun Mediation Center in Northampton, Massachusetts. Dianna is a visual artist, concentrating in tile and mosaic using Italian Byzantine glass, smalti and handmade tile.  

Dianna lives in Northampton, Massachusetts, with her daughter, Briana Collete, along with her dog and cat.

Jonathan D. “Jack” Suss

901 Ednor Rd.

Silver Spring, MD 20905

Telephone: (301) 421-4309; Fax (301) 591-0615

Email: sussjd@

Jonathan D. “Jack” Suss is a hard-working creative loafer in a kind of secluded semi-retirement from a string of seemingly unconnected jobs. Currently (and perhaps paradoxically), he has just launched a real estate title company in Maryland. He is a lawyer and CIIS doctoral candidate in Humanities in the midst of writing a sweeping theoretical dissertation that attempts to fathom the origins and chart the development of law and legal culture within the Western legal tradition by examining the continuing evolution of jurisprudence in the context of a structures of consciousness analysis (seeing law as ideally moving toward what he calls "integral jurisprudence"). He is also a tireless poet-fighter against the "glare" of consensual reality and culture trance, though often believing he is doomed to live the scruffy life of a bluesman. He bemoans the decline of the authentic and agitates for the demise of TV bumperoo/techno-soul-snatching and a return to more primitive simplicities.

Jack lives with his wife (Casey) and two children in Silver Spring.

Howard Vogel

Law professor

Hamline University School of Law

1536 Hewitt Avenue

Saint Paul, Minnesota 55104

Telephone: (o) (651) 523-2120; Fax: (651) 523-2236

web:

Email: hvogel@gw.hamline.edu

Howard Vogel’s commitment to a public life in the law centers on two major themes: the possibilities of law and the legal profession as a vocation or calling; and the persistent and pervasive problem of cultural conflict in a pluralistic society as exemplified especially by issues of racial justice in American life. These themes are related to his journey from high school through college to law practice and eventually to law teaching at Hamline University School of Law.

Professor Vogel was attracted to public life in his high school and college years through the dream of entering the Foreign Service of the United States. In both high school and college he studied international relations and human rights in pursuit of his dream. His dream of diplomatic service came to an end during three years of service in the U.S. Navy, that included deployments in the Mediterranean Sea and the Middle East. His attraction to public life continued, however, and he decided to pursue this through a life in the law. In doing so he drew inspiration from the example of the United States Supreme Court and the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., in the civil rights era of the 1950s and 60s. During his law school years, Professor Vogel, like many of his classmates, was attracted to the “new public interest lawyers” that were much talked and written about in the late 1960s. This led him to volunteer time to work on legislative advocacy on environmental protection issues with a local citizens organization.

His volunteer work with environmental organizations continued and expanded upon his entry into practice in the 1970s, and he soon became deeply involved in advocacy before local units of government, the state legislature, the state pollution control agency and in state and federal court. A year after graduation from law school he struck out on his own as a solo practitioner. Following a year in solo practice he was joined by a law school classmate in a practice devoted to environmental advocacy and issues of freedom of expression and equal protection. During this period of time he was involved in one of the early cases involving a nuclear power plant under the National Environmental Protection Act (NEPA) and served as counsel to the environmental plaintiff-interveners in the landmark case involving the successful cessation of pollution of Lake Superior by taconite iron ore mining operations in Northern Minnesota. He also advised and occasionally formally represented people engaged in nonviolent direct action as a form of expressing their opposition to the war in Viet Nam. Much of this work involved association with people and organizations who were religiously motivated in their resistance to the war. His work with these people sparked his interest in theology and led him to complete a Master of Arts Degree in Religious Studies with an emphasis on theological ethics and public issues while continuing to practice law.

In 1975 he left practice to join the faculty of Hamline University School of Law. Here his teaching and research continue to focus on public issues through the interdisciplinary lens of the intersection and interaction of law, religion, and ethics. In later years he participated in writing the argument on religious free exercise under the Minnesota State Constitution in a case that successfully marked out a greater degree of religious freedom in the state than under the Federal constitution. This experience, plus that of teaching in Jerusalem in the Hamline summer program, crystallized his ongoing interest in conflict over sacred sites, especially as it relates to Native American Sacred Sites on public land.

In recent years his interest in the persistent and pervasive forms of cultural conflict has led him to explore and develop a new course in Restorative Justice with an emphasis on the possibilities for employing the “talking circle process” of indigenous people to deal with racial justice and other forms of cultural conflict. This, in turn has led him to explore what it means to think of the work of the lawyer as a vocation or calling in light of the potential such work has for contributing to the common good. In 2003 he played a leading role in the successful argument to the Minnesota Supreme Court to expand the Court’s rules relating to continuing education for lawyers to include professional development that goes beyond traditional substantive doctrinal concerns of competence. His current teaching repertoire reflects these interests: Constitutional Law, Restorative Justice, and a seminar in ethics that explores the identity and professional responsibility of lawyers in comparison to other professions. He also teaches International Human Rights Law from time to time. In addition to his teaching Professor Vogel is an associate editor of the Journal of Law and Religion, and has been active for over 25 years in the Society of Christian Ethics and is a co-founder of its Interest Group on Restorative Justice.

Ralph White

Editor, Lapis Magazine

83 Spring St

New York, NY 10012

Telephone: (718) 482 8768

Email: rwmail@

Ralph White is co-founder of the New York Open Center, the city's leading venue for holistic learning for the last eighteen years, which presents year-round workshops, courses, lectures, and performances in a wide variety of holistic, spiritual, and ecological areas. Since its inception in 1995, he has also been editor of Lapis magazine. He taught the first accredited course in holistic learning at New York University and has organized numerous national and international conferences on a broad range of themes, including Reimagining Politics and Society at the Millennium (co-sponsored by the Foundation for Ethics and Meaning), Globalization and Technology: A Marriage Made in Heaven or Hell? (co-sponsored with the International Forum on Globalization), Voluntary Simplicity, A New Holistic Medicine for the Twentieth Century, and Psyche, Spirit and Addiction. He has also produced four conferences on the Western Esoteric Tradition in the Czech Republic, Italy, and Wales.

Ralph was formerly program director of Omega Institute for Holistic Studies in Rhinebeck, New York in the early Eighties, and prior to that was director of education at Cluny Hill College at the Findhorn Foundation in northern Scotland. He is currently a Board member of Sunbridge College in Spring Valley, New York, which grants masters degrees in Waldorf Education and offers numerous programs in anthroposophy. Under the auspices of various foundations he worked in Eastern Europe and Russia in the immediate aftermath of communism, helping in the inception and development of numerous holistic centers in Poland, Russia, and the Czech Republic. Under his editorship Lapis won the 2000 Alternative Press Award for its work in the field of new paradigm/emerging culture. He has also written on travel and adventure in Tibet, and is currently at work on a memoir of his own search for truth and meaning. He has a longstanding engagement with the interplay between authentic spirituality and political and cultural regeneration, and feels that the emergence of groups dedicated to the much-needed renewal of the American legal system is a story that should be told widely.

Matthew Wilkes

C/O NEW COLLEGE OF CALIFORNIA

777 VALENCIA STREET, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94110

TELEPHONE: (415) 593-0505; FAX: (415) 593-0506

EMAIL: MWILKES@NEWCOLLEGE.EDU

The work in which I have been engaged over the past year is with New College of California (where, when I am away from my Brooklyn, NY, home, I am housed in the office of the Institute for Spirituality and Politics, sharing space, time, conversation, occasional meals, and some work with colleagues and fellow office mates Wendy Ervin and Peter Gabel). I feel fortunate this brings me to work with others committed to an educational institution that, along with its pubic interest law school, at its core, for the more than thirty years since its founding, has pursued an idealistic communal vision as an alternative to destructive influences and structures coursing though mainstream culture. Another like-minded professionally related group I have been involved with over the past year is called “Sitting Lawyers,” a West Coast working group of the Law Program of the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society, a nonprofit organization working to integrate contemplative awareness into contemporary life in order to help create a more just, compassionate, and reflective society.

Before this I worked for about a dozen years at New York Law School, most recently as Associate Dean for Public Interest and Community Service, creating a new office to concentrate on public interest efforts across the law school, and prior to that as Associate Dean for Student Affairs over a period that spanned the last decade of the last century. Prior experience in legal education included approximately five years working in the administration of CUNY Law School, then recently launched with a mandate to use innovative methods to train a diverse group of students to pursue careers in public interest law.

This followed a period as administrative director of a start-up nonprofit educational organization, the Center for Law and Human Values, with the aim to transform the study and practice of law by moving beyond the adversary model, by bringing to bear a humanistic perspective and, in particular, through teaching the understanding-based mediation model being developed with its sister institution, the Center for Mediation in Law. My law-related work prior to that was in public service positions in federal, state, and city offices, following experience in a variety of “non-professional” roles and work places, ranging from furniture delivery to road repair and work in a lumber store, factories and warehouses, a cemetery and a prison.

J. Kim Wright, J.D.

Mailing: P. O. Box 306, Asheville, NC 28802

Office: The Flat Iron Building, Suite 708; 20 Battery Park Avenue, Asheville, NC 28801

Telephone: (o) (828) 253-3355 / Fax: (828) 255-3315

Home: 306 North Fork Road, Black Mountain, NC 28711

Cell: (971) 219-7442 / (h) (828) 664-0363

Web:



Email: jkimwright@

jkimwright@

J. Kim Wright is an attorney, coach, and consultant who is a speaker and writer on a new model for the legal profession that works for everyone—lawyers, clients, and society. Kim was a business owner and mother of seven children when she returned to law school at age 29. After passing both the Georgia and Florida bar exams, she worked as the director of a domestic violence program in Florida. She relocated to North Carolina and joined the North Carolina Bar in 1994, beginning to  practice law in the traditional legal system. After enthusiastically winning her first custody trial and crushing the other side, she noticed that the family still had a lot of problems. Litigation did not resolve their conflict, it actually made it a lot worse, and her client kept calling her, wanting to ease the pain. The long hours, the brilliant trial techniques, and legal expertise didn’t resolve the problem the client brought to her in the first place. It was frustrating for Kim and she was tempted to become cynical and to give up on ever making a difference. She questioned whether she should practice law at all. Instead, Kim began to investigate ways to work with clients that were innovative and focused on healing the pain and chaos of  legal dispute.

As she explored innovative approaches, she took them into her own law practice and applied them with her clients. From 1995 to 2000, she experimented with the approaches in her practice in a small town in central North Carolina. Using a coach, she created The Divorce and Family Law Center, a comprehensive law practice providing for all the needs of clients going through divorce: legal representation, social work, coaching, counseling, mediation, and resources for divorcing clients and the community. As her practice evolved, she began to see that her clients were much more empowered and she was making the difference that she always wanted to make, resolving problems, easing pain, reconnecting and helping people. She actually liked to practice law! She even worked less hours and made more money. Clients welcomed the new approaches; even the clients who initially came in looking for revenge shifted when they were offered the opportunity to actually resolve their situations. She began to see herself as a peacemaker and began to imagine a legal profession where all lawyers saw themselves as peacemakers, healers, and problem-solvers.

In 2000, when she relocated to Oregon, she made the decision to focus her energies on sharing the lessons from her law practice into a new coaching practice (), working with other lawyers to transform their practices, creating a new model and future for the legal profession, creating a new context of lawyers as peacemakers, healers, and problem-solvers. Discovering many like-minded lawyers, she and a team of visionary colleagues founded the Renaissance Lawyer Society in 2000.  The Renaissance Lawyer Society web site, originally written by Kim, features over a dozen innovative approaches, models, and trends to law practice which are all based on connecting people rather than separating and polarizing them. Kim now serves as Chairman of the Board of Renaissance Lawyer. She speaks and writes for legal periodicals about innovative approaches to law practice that are based upon connecting people, solving problems, and resolving conflict. She also leads trainings and continuing education programs based on her work.

In 2003, Kim was recruited to join a Portland law firm called Peace-Making. There, she met and worked with Marty Price. (Marty is also attending the retreat and his bio is included.) After working together for several months, both Kim and Marty left the firm to pursue the creation of their own venture: Healers of Conflicts, named for the Warren Burger quote:

The entire legal profession — lawyers, judges, law teachers have become so mesmerized with the stimulation of the courtroom contest that we tend to forget that we ought to be healers… healers of conflicts. Doctors, in spite of astronomical medical costs, still retain a high degree of public confidence because they are perceived as healers. Should lawyers not be healers? Healers, not warriors? Healers, not procurers?  Healers not hired guns?

Their stand-alone mediation practice received good press and accolades in Portland but without the portal of a law firm, it wasn't financially supporting. After investigating some other options, Kim and Marty relocated to Asheville, North Carolina in summer, 2004, to establish a new law practice that incorporates all the peace-making approaches that Kim has been speaking and writing about.

In November, Kim's youngest child moved out. This was a major life transition. Since she was 19, she had spent much of her energy raising children, two birth children and six 'chosen' children. Children had been a major focus of her life. Besides mothering, she had been a foster parent, guardian ad litem, teen advocate, and a haven for homeless teens in Chapel Hill, NC. (While some children bring home stray puppies, Kim's children brought home other children.) Kim's still adjusting to her new life.

................
................

In order to avoid copyright disputes, this page is only a partial summary.

Google Online Preview   Download