1. Rhonda V. Magee Professor of Law University of San Francisco
Mindfulness and the Law: Practices for Self-care and Resilience in Troubled Times.
Rhonda V. Magee
Professor of Law
University of San Francisco

2. Mindfulness: It’s everywhere
Mindfulness: It’s everywhere! Reportedly strengthens a range of skills and capacities.
E.g.: Richard Goerling, Police Lieutenant, Portland, OR Practicing and bringing mindfulness to police officers.

3. What is Mindfulness?
Mindfulness is paying attention to the present moment in an intentionally open way: experiencing the arising and falling mental and sensory phenomena of our lives without judgment – no attachment, no aversion, no delusional indifference. It is an invitation to being more fully present to the unrepeatable moments of our lives.

4. What is the role of self-care and compassion?
Self-compassion is extending compassion to one's self in instances of perceived inadequacy, failure, or general suffering. Dr. Kristin Neff has defined self-compassion as being composed of three main components – self-kindness, common humanity, and mindfulness. Studies link self-compassion not only with the capacity for compassion for others, but with the capacity to acknowledge error and self-correct, which is essential to ethical development.

5. How Might Mindfulness Assist You?
A range of practices may support increased awareness and wellbeing:
sitting
yoga
communication…
… and a way of being in the world with flexibility and resilience.

6. Personal practices that can have significant benefit when practiced in community with others, whether implicitly or explicitly.

7. Engaged Mindfulness….
… Awareness practices taking us deeper into the world in which we find ourselves.
… nurturing interpersonal connection in the service of social justice and the creation of community.
… honoring lived experience and meaningful difference as pathways to deepening common humanity.

8. Mindful, compassionate lawyers are psychologically flexible and can help others become so:
Excerpted from: Acceptance and Commitment Therapy Made Simple, Steven Hayes, Ph.D.

9. Mindful Processes for Resolving Conflict and Promoting Justice.
Contacting the Big Present
Aligning with Values, Expanding Knowledge and Skills
Ground, Choose and Defuse
Act to Transform
Processes, Systems….
New Birth of Justice/Just Community
Psychological Flexibility

10. Skillfully addressing conflict across communities, turning toward suffering in “our own” and “other” communities and forging collaborations.
Exploring transformative projects -- From Personal Practice to new, Restorative Justice Systems.

11. Transformative Justice: Mindful Legal Ed, Law & Practice
“All In, Front to Back”
Intra-Personal
Inter-Personal
Systemic
A justice system grounded in mindfulness, compassion, and human dignity and lawyers who build peace and community resilience.

12. Lawyers Report: Real change can happen.
“ Contemplative practice has helped me to see how interconnected all of life is...
I am beginning to view the law profession as one that can heal relationships instead of one that is adversarial.” (R10, 7/27/12)

13. your work for creating a more just world?
Reflecting Together:
Q: How will you explore
awareness
practices in
your work for
creating a more just
world?

14. with curiosity, gratitude, and the love that is what justice looks like in public.