Transformational law: New approaches expand choices in law practice

Source: (2004) Washington State Bar News (February).

In this article, J. Kim Wright collaborates with Dolly Garlo and Marty Price to expand on an article she wrote a couple of years earlier on transformational law. The adversarial approach, the authors note, has been the dominant mode of dispute resolution in Western societies for centuries. In recent decades, mediators, religious officials, neighborhood organizations, and others have begun to explore and develop less adversarial methods of dispute resolution. Correspondingly, there has been a rise in new approaches to practicing law that give lawyers alternative tools for dispute resolution. Susan Daicoff has characterized the new approaches as comprehensive or transformational lawyering. Others speak of holistic law, therapeutic jurisprudence, preventive law, restorative justice, law and healing, collaborative law, transformative law, creative problem-solving, or procedural justice. In this context, Wright, Garlo, and Price survey these new choices in law practice.