The Wake Up Call for Lawyers

Wisdom Inquiries: The Invisible Chain that Links Lawyers, Clients, Opponents, and All

January 19, 2023 Judi Cohen Season 7 Episode 380
The Wake Up Call for Lawyers
Wisdom Inquiries: The Invisible Chain that Links Lawyers, Clients, Opponents, and All
Show Notes Transcript

What if the perfection of wisdom is bigger than clarity and insight and interconnection? What if it’s bigger than not causing harm? What if the perfection of wisdom is understanding that not only are we – lawyers, clients, opponents, and all – impossibly and irrevocably linked by some great invisible chain, but also, or more so, worthy of each other’s care, and empathy, and love?

 As Hafiz says, “Look what happens with a love like that. It lights the whole sky.”



Wake Up Call #380: Wisdom Inquiries: The Invisible Chain that Links Lawyers, Clients, Opponents, and All

 

Hi everyone, it’s Judi Cohen and this is Wake Up Call 380. 

 

I’ve been talking over the last couple of weeks about prajnaparamita, the perfection of wisdom. And while I’ve been talking about prajnaparamita and the other five paramitas, everyone knows I’ve also been reading Norman Fischer’s book about the paramitas, The World Could be Otherwise

 

If you’ve been reading along, or you’ve read Norman’s book some other time, you know that Norman doesn’t use the word “wisdom” for the sixth paramita. He uses the word “understanding.” He calls prajnaparamita the “perfection of understanding.” So even though I’ve been talking about wisdom these last couple of weeks (as if I know anything about wisdom, which is funny in & of itself), I thought I’d shift to “understanding” for today’s Wake Up Call.

 

In the chapter on prajnaparamita, Norman has a whole disquisition about language and how difficult it is to say what we mean with words, which are so imprecise. But we are lawyers! Our training is to do exactly that: to say exactly what we mean, using words, in the most precise way possible. One wrong word – or misplaced letter or punctuation mark – and a client’s fate, or our career, could hang in the balance. 

 

But maybe because our professional life is based in language, it’s also easy to see how Norman is right. (In my experience, Norman is pretty much always right.) He’s right that language is imprecise, not only because it’s so difficult to come up with exactly the right words to say exactly what we mean, but also because language is just a reflection of reality – “reality” being a whole other topic, of course. 

 

But, so, language is a reflection of reality. My favorite example of this is a contract. Whenever I wrote a contract for a client, I would always say the same thing: we’re going to all this trouble, all this expense, to say exactly what you want to have happen, and exactly what happens if the situation falls apart. And, once it’s signed, you’ll put the contract in a drawer and hopefully never look at it again. You and the other parties will do your deal, live your lives, and hopefully work things out. The contract is not the deal. It never was, and it only will be if the humans can’t work things out. 

 

Maybe all lawyers tell this to their clients. I hope so. 

 

So words are just a reflection of reality; they’re not reality. But, language still matters. Which is why Norman proposes that a better word for prajnaparamita is “understanding.” He goes through the etymology of “wisdom” and of “understanding,” which also resonates for the lawyer in me. And je concludes that wisdom is an old-fashioned word that denotes sobriety, caution, prudence, and other things that aren’t conducive to the imaginative world into which Norman is inviting us in his exploration of the paramitas. I hadn’t thought of wisdom as so fuddy-duddy: I’d always thought of it as insight, and that a wise person was someone who could see clearly. 

 

Norman doesn’t disagree but he picks “understanding” as the more inclusive name for this final paramita. Here’s what he says:

 

Understanding…is an interesting, double-sided word. It includes much of what wisdom does. If you understand, you see things clearly and from all sides, which will give you discernment. But the word understanding hides within it something more. Etymologically, to understand is ‘to stand with.’ The ‘under’ part of the word doesn’t mean under. It comes from a proto-Indo-European root that means ‘among, or between,’ not ‘beneath.’ So, understanding means to be close to, to be with. And,” he says, “we take it like that. An understanding person, we feel, is compassionate, considerate, empathic…exactly the spirit of prajna…. The perfection of understanding includes [two parts:]…to know, to see, how elusive and shimmering this life is and, at the same time, with and through this seeing, to be understanding of life, to care for it, to stand with it in empathy, love, and compassion.”

 

If this is true, and again, in my experience, most of what Norman says seems true to me, then what does it mean to be an understanding lawyer? In other words, what does prajnaparamita mean for lawyers?

 

The first part seems simple to see: to practice the perfection of understanding as a lawyer is to see things clearly from all sides, and to have discernment: discernment, meaning as I understand and share it, the commitment that our words, our actions, our choices, matter, and impact one another, and we want them to have a positive, wholesome impact. So again, simple to see, although maybe not always easy to do, because let’s face it: plenty of the matters we work on are multi-faceted and complicated and it’s not always easy to see things clearly from all sides, even though we’re certainly trained to do that. 

 

But the second part, the second side: to be close to, to be with, to be compassionate, understanding, empathic? This, I think for us, is the harder part. Because as Norman says, all we are really talking about on this second side, is love. Yet we have much more practice in keeping our professional distance, in being insightful and incisive, in presenting a calm, cool, collected demeanor, than we do in being close to our clients, really seeing them, fully empathizing with them and, frankly, loving them. And yet, according to Norman, “of course love and understanding go together! …To practice the perfection of understanding is to understand this life truly and deeply. Knowing life as it is, we love it. Understanding beings, naturally we love them…”

 

What if we practiced that kind of understanding in relationship to our clients, our colleagues, opposing counsel, the judges, and all the players? What if we practiced it at home? What if we practiced it in the political domain? The environmental? All of the places where we lend our good hearts, our willing hands, our expertise? What could change, if we put energy into the perfection of understanding that looks like knowing and seeing how elusive and shimmering this life is and, at the same time, with and through this seeing, understanding life – our clients, colleagues, opponents, friends, family, planet – caring for them and standing with them – all of them - in empathy, love, and compassion?

 

 

Let’s sit.

 

 

What if the perfection of wisdom 

is bigger than clarity and insight and interconnection?

What if it’s bigger than not causing harm?

 

What if the heart of wisdom is understanding

that not only are we 

– lawyers, clients, opponents, and all – 

impossibly and irrevocably linked by some great invisible chain,

but also, or more so,

worthy of each other’s care, and empathy, and love?

 

As Hafiz says,

“Look what happens with a love like that.

It lights the whole sky.”

 

 

 

 

[Play the John Lennon Imagine video at the end of the Paramitas – whenever that is! (It’s bookmarked under Music.)]