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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: http://www.gjp.org/
Email: doug@gjp.org
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
PISLAP -- Atlanta, Georgia 2004: Participants
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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: www.atlantalaw.net
Email: nora@atlantalaw.net
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
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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@abanet.org
coachkac@aol.com
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
www.newprospects.net
Email: clccounselor@aol.com
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
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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.
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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@socialaw.com
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.
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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.
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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
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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.
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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@hotmail.com
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@znet.com
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
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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@lehtopenfield.com
Founder, CopyCare Copying Services: A nonprofit business
PO Box 1091, Everett, WA 98206-1091
Telephone: (425) 257-2297; Email: www.copycare.org
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.
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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@tikkun.org
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
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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.
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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@civtrial.com
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: www.healersofconflicts.com and www.vorp.com
Email: martyprice@healersofconflicts.com or martyprice@vorp.com
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.
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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.
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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@designlawgroup.com
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@earthlink.net
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
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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 (www.meaning.org), 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@verizon.net
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@aol.com
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
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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@yahoo.com
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: http://www.hamline.edu/law/faculty/vogel.html
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.
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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
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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@ix.netcom.com
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.
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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.
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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: www.healersofconflicts.com
www.consciouscoach.com
Email: jkimwright@healersofconflicts.com
jkimwright@earthlink.net
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 (www.consciouscoach.com), working with other lawyers to transform their
practices, creating a new model and future for the legal profession, creating a new context
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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.
23
