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'Comprehensive law' makes the case for a kinder, gentler law practice.

Article Excerpt
It's no secret that lawyers have an image problem. A recent annual CNN/USA Today Gallup Poll that ranks the public's view of the honesty and integrity of people in various professions placed lawyers near the bottom--where they've been since pollsters started keeping track in the 1970s.

Public dissatisfaction with the legal profession and with the justice system as a whole is not new--lawyer bashing has been a popular pastime among poets and pundits for millennia. And with little support from other professions, attorneys have been left to defend the legal system largely on their own. In forums both public and private, lawyers have argued the case--in typical adversarial fashion--that every civilized society is built on the foundations of a strong justice system and, of course, the lawyers who work within it.

But a growing minority of lawyers are trying a different approach: They're spending a lot less time arguing and a lot more time listening--especially to their clients.

These lawyers are part of a movement that has, for the most part, broken away from the traditional adversarial model of advocacy. That model, they say, often falls short of serving people's needs--especially the need to be heard--leaving clients angry, hurt, and dissatisfied.

Susan Daicoff, a visiting professor of law at Florida Coastal School of Law in Jacksonville, has been studying what she has dubbed the "comprehensive law" movement. It incorporates about a dozen practice variations that go by names like preventive lawyering, collaborative lawyering, and creative problem-solving.

Among the variations, Daicoff said, "some are nonadversarial, some are alternatives to litigation." All share two underlying themes: "One is what I call optimizing human well-being," she said, "and the other is what [collaborative lawyer] Pauline Tessler calls 'rights plus'"--which, loosely defined, means expanding the scope of traditional legal practice beyond...

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