Lawyers as Healers
In spite of the fact that lawyers are one of the oldest professions and an indispensable aspect of modern societies, they are perceived by public as dull, insensitive and emotionally stolid. The main reason for lawyers to have such an ignominious public perception is that lawyers are unresponsive to the emotional needs of their clients. More often than not, ¡°clients who have been victimised come to lawyers expecting that their emotions will matter and that lawyers will care; yet they come away disappointed.¡±
A sect of legal community has realised this problem and attempted to change it by approaching their clients in an entirely new way. Their new approach, known as the holistic approach, differentiates from the traditional approach due to the facts that these holistic lawyers provide emotional healings as well as legal advice to their clients. They argue that ¡°the ultimate goal of a lawyer is not to ¡®win¡¯ but to achieve justice and healing.¡± The new approach has generated a great amount of controversies. The essence of the debate can be summarised into two questions: Can lawyers be healers? If yes, should they be healers?
In answering the first question, holistic lawyers rely on history to justify their modern approach. It is argued that lawyers as a profession first appeared when King Henry II of England, decided to send his travelling justice on regular circuits through his realm in an attempt to replace the old method of trial by battle with peaceful resolution of disputes. As a result of this, advocates soon emerged to represent those appearing before the travelling justice and the tradition of legal profession was born,
¡°From the beginning, the lawyers were intended to remove the sting of trial by ...