Dean Jennifer Brown is pleased to announce the launch of The Quinnipiac University School of Law Center on Dispute Resolution Project for Integrative Law in Legal Education. Officially created in July 2022, the Project had a ceremonial launch on December 1, 2022, in a hybrid event with an in-person reception at Quinnipiac University Center on Dispute Resolution.
Senior Fellows Named
The Center on Dispute Resolution has named two Senior Fellows to lead the Project, along with Center co-director Carolyn Kaas: Susan Swaim Daicoff and J. Kim Wright.
Daicoff and Wright first met in 1999 at the annual conference of the International Alliance of Holistic Lawyers. Wright, who was practicing holistic law at that time, was fascinated by Daicoff’s connection between lawyer well-being and different ways of practicing, in what Daicoff then called Comprehensive Law in her book Comprehensive Law Practice: Law as a Healing Profession (Carolina Academic Press, 2011). Wright went on to be the founder of the Renaissance Lawyer Society, a group of practitioners seeking new ways of practicing law and eventually to write and edit three books on integrative law for the American Bar Association.
What is Integrative Law?
Integrative Law is the collective name for a worldwide movement of legal professionals (Integrative Lawyers) who are rethinking and exploring what the law is and what its function should be in society. They are designing new models and approaches which often arise from a different set of values. Examples include collaborative practice, restorative justice, Earth law, sharing law, relational contracts, therapeutic jurisprudence, and several others.
“Integrative law is like the soil, from which many new models of legal practice are emerging,” says J. Kim Wright, one of the central figures in the Integrative Law Movement. The values in this “soil” are different from the conventional legal values (safety, certainty, emotional detachment, etc.) Integrative Law values are more focused on caring, listening, compassion, dignity, inclusivity, being relational, happiness, wellbeing, and love.
Integrative law caught the attention of Carolyn Kaas, Associate Dean of Experiential Education and Co-Director of the Center on Dispute Resolution.She contributed to Wright’s book Lawyers as Changemakers, The Global Integrative Law Movement (ABA, 2016) and has been exploring the nexus of Dispute Resolution and Integrative Law for several years.Kaas believes that “whether they identify as Integrative Lawyers or not, most ADR professionals are shifting paradigms and practicing differently in ways that improve well-being for all stakeholders.This makes them quintessential Integrative Lawyers.”
Mission of the Project
The mission of the Project on Integrative Law in Legal Education is to bring the innovation and lessons learned from integrative law practice and merge them with what we’ve learned in legal education about experiential education, well-being, and dispute resolution in the field of law.
In addition to developing the curriculum at the law school, some of the activities we plan are:
● Scholarship in the field of integrative law and legal education
● A Summer Institute for trainings for lawyers, and faculty from other law school who wish to teach Integrative Law.
● Participation and leadership in a consortium of other legal educators who are teaching integrative law topics
● Supporting the teaching of integrative law subjects in law schools around the world
Quinnipiac Law School’s Unique History With Integrative Law
Dean Jennifer Brown has long been interested in alternative approaches to law. She has taught from Wright’s first book, Lawyers as Peacemakers (ABA, 2010) and has published on therapeutic jurisprudence topics. When the pandemic grounded Kim Wright’s global travel, Carrie Kaas proposed a clinic, applying the integrative principles. In 2020, Quinnipiac launched the first clinic specifically applying the principles and values of integrative law: our Negotiation Clinic. Wright, Kaas, and co-teacher Jacqueline Horani have recently submitted an article about the Clinic for publication in the December, 2022 issue of the Washington University at St. Louis Journal of Law and Policy.
The Center has also created new course at Quinnipiac “The Integrative Law Approach to Negotiation” which was taught for the first time in fall 2022, and will be co-taught by Wright and Rhiannon Thomas, an integrative lawyer from South Africa. We plan further curricular expansion and trainings, such as “Topics in Integrative Law” which will focus on specific vectors of Integrative Law, such as Earth Law; Restorative Justice; Collaborative Practice; and Sharing Law.