Chuck Morris of Delray Beach doesn’t know what “holistic lawyering” is, but he knows what he likes. He likes the style of a Coconut Creek attorney named Martin Zevin.
When Morris and his wife were hurt in a car crash on Federal Highway in the late 1980s, they went to Zevin. “His approach was to be very careful, very analytical to be fair to all concerned.”
That included the 18-year-old driver of the 18-year-old car that caused the accident. “A sweet young man, I felt sorry for him,” Morris said.
When the case was settled, “no one felt ripped off,” Morris said. And when he sent Zevin a friend who hurt his arm in a fall at a gas station, and Zevin turned down the case, Morris wasn’t hurt or surprised.
“He doesn’t believe in gratuitious law cases.”
Such a refreshing change from the lawyers Morris, 80, employed and observed over the 40-plus years he sold textile machinery. “Most were push push, go for the jugular,” he said. Not Zevin.
He and a small but growing band of lawyers are practicing in a way that is both radically new and reassuringly old: holistically. Scattered throughout America, most of these polite pioneers have solo practices or work in small firms; some are judges and educators.
Like holistic medical doctors who treat the whole patient instead of a symptom, these lawyers think of the client as a complex human being to counsel — not a narrow legal problem to resolve. Rather than launching all-out attacks on opponents to secure victory at any cost, they attempt conciliation first.
“The whole concept is to try to find a win-win solution, instead of having an adversarial mental attitude of kill the other side, which, unfortunately, too many lawyers have,” said Zevin, chairman of the South Florida chapter of the International Alliance of Holistic Lawyers (IAHL).
The technique is about listening to the client long enough to get below the surface of the problem and try to discern what he or she really wants. A holistic lawyer’s goal in a divorce case, for example, is for all members of the family to come away feeling they can go on with their lives.
Alice Best, a traffic hearing officer in Miami-Dade County, approaches her job holistically. “I listen to them,” she said.
And when they explain their position fighting a ticket, for instance, she’ll say, “are you complete with your answer?” Then she’ll give them a choice: typically, points or driving school.
“It’s their choice and now they are included. I have empowered them,” Best said. She said a big burly guy made her day when he lost, but at the courtroom door turned and said, “Thank you. You listened. You were fair.”
The attorney is supposed to feel good about the process and the result as well. “It’s lawyer heal thyself,” said Bruce Winick, a University of Miami law professor who is involved in therapeutic jurisprudence, a movement that shares some of holistic law’s goals.
Holistic lawyering is different things to different people. Followers draw from Eastern traditions, Native American spirituality, New Age writers like Marianne Williamson, and Judeo-Christian principles like the Golden Rule.
“To me it’s just a way of conducting a case,” said Richard Kaplan, a Coral Springs probate attorney who is also mayor of Lauderhill. “I’m more a counselor at law, which is an older term. I counsel clients on their problems in a humanitarian way in the best way for that client to ease the pain as much as possible.”
He gives the example of a father who died and left three sons, one of whom was a half-brother to the others. They were at odds over the will and wouldn’t talk to each other. Kaplan, who technically represented the personal representative of the father, set about mending fences.
With his client’s permission he started sending all three brothers copies of everything he did. “In a sense I was advising three people.”
The technique worked, and not just because a will contest was avoided. “When the case was all done they were talking to each other much better,” Kaplan said.
Counselor at law. Holistic lawyer. Either term is fine with Bill van Zyverden, the Middlebury, Vt., lawyer who started the IAHL with nine kindred spirits in 1992 and now counts 670 members.
“We don’t define what holistic law means,” said van Zyverden. “We allow everyone to have their own meaning.”
Van Zyverden, 43, is a lanky Bill Gates look-alike who worked in computer marketing and studied math and music before law school. His own inspiration is tai chi, with its philosophy of “always yielding, and power comes from within.”
He keeps his rates low, involves his clients in the work and follows his own particular code.
When a potential criminal defense client comes in, “other lawyers won’t ask if they’re guilty. It’s my first question,” said van Zyverden.
“I refuse to represent a client who refuses to take responsibility for their actions, even if law enforcement’s conduct outweighs the defendant’s wrongdoing.”
Van Zyverden and his board, who met in Miami Beach last weekend, speak of legal reform in such a gentle, oblique way, it’s easy to forget how subversive their approach really is.
The adversarial system followed for centuries in America and Great Britain assumes that a pitched battle is the best route to the truth.
Likewise, law firm economies rely on fees generated by prolonged skirmishes inside and outside the courtroom.
Aspiring young lawyers know the road to success at their firms is paved with billable hours. They learn fast that nice guys finish last.
But there are problems with that model, and critics see it cracking at the core.
They cite high rates of alcoholism and suicide in the profession, and polls showing an increasing number of lawyers are profoundly unhappy with who they are and what they do.
“A lot of lawyers have confused egotism with real self-respect: If I make a lot of money, then I’m good. It’s a very externally oriented definition of success that has proved to be a failed theory of success,” said Lawrence Krieger, a law professor at Florida State University in Tallahassee.
Krieger, a former Palm Beach County prosecutor and “gung-ho litigator type,” shows his students they can’t win every case. He tells them lawyering takes more than analytical skills, the traditional focus of legal education.
“Holistic means you get to be a person, you get to be a real person, and real people have feelings, they make mistakes, they’re not perfect, there are some things they don’t know,” Krieger said. “If lawyers have a healthy relationship with themselves, it would naturally express itself as a healthy relationship to the system.”
That personal growth aspect of holistic lawyering has captured the imagination of the organized Bar in Florida. It has been a focus of the Florida Supreme Court’s Commission on Professionalism since its start 2 years ago.
“We want people to look forward to going into the law office or to the court every day and feel satisfied when they drive home in the evenings with what they’re done that day,” said Justice Harry Lee Anstead, who chairs the commission.
As part of his work for the commission Anstead met in Miami with managing partners of major law firms.
He told them they should do two things: designate someone their lawyers can approach confidentially to report unethical conduct by colleagues, and reexamine their billable-hour requirements for young lawyers.
“In many instances the hours are oppressive, too great for an ordinary hard-working individual,” Anstead said. “You can imagine how disruptive that is to the rest of their lives, and what a stress.”
He said lawyers need to know there is someone they can go to within the firm to say without fear of reprisal, “Did you know you have a jerk in your office?”
The main goal is developing the kind of lawyers who can improve the justice system. “We want people who want to help people with their problems and not necessarily to win cases,” Anstead said.
“We want to be sure people are coming into the profession with these kinds of motivations. We want people to care about people and their communities and society as a whole.”
“We believe people should focus on that and not wait for a midlife crisis and reflect back that maybe this wasn’t what they wanted to do.”
Noreen Marcus can be reached at or 954-356-4519.
