Practical Mindfulness: Taking Mindfulness Off the Cushion and Into Your Legal Practice for Greater Resilience, Calm, and Joy

Timother Lambert is the Senior Counsel at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Phillis is the founder of Resilient At Work, a consultancy that helps organizations reduce conflict and litigation risk by helping workers cultivate awareness, calmness, compassion, and wisdom using mindfulness.

She is a NATO Medal recipient, labor and employment lawyer and executive coach who has worked in conflict environments for 30 years, including Afghanistan, Uganda and Nepal, and has studied mindfulness meditation with masters in Thailand and India.

Phillis has defended the Departments of Homeland Security, Defense and Justice, as well as Fortune 100 companies, in hundreds of legal actions with billions of dollars and reputations at risk.

She is the author of numerous publications, including The Federal Labor Relations Manual: Your Guide to Navigating the Law, and the forthcoming book Courage in Conflict: A Manager’s Guide to Reducing Conflict Using Mindfulness.

She is a member of the ABA Law Practice Division’s attorney well-being, membership and diversity and inclusion committees. To learn more about Resilient At Work’s mindfulness programs for leadership, bias, and stress reduction, go to www.resilientatwork.com or email [email protected].

Cheryl brings to her counseling, consulting, and public programming, a depth of worldly experience, as an accomplished lawyer, alternative thinker, and serial entrepreneur. Law. The American Bar Association named her its first Legal Rebel and she served both in the private sector, at Goodwin, Procter and Hoar, and in the public, as an Assist. Attorney General, U.S. Attorney and Sen. Counsel to the Mass. Legislature. She has been a serial entrepreneur on numerous fronts. She has been a way-shower promoting integrative and holistic approaches, advancing curricula on reflective and contemplative approaches to clinical education, speaking nationally and also co-founding one of the first holistic law and mediation firms in the U.S.

She was co-founding faculty of an MBA in Sustainability program, which integrated systems thinking, alternative corporate forms and governance forms within the curriculum.

She catalyzed and supported the creation of one of the first cooperative holistic health initiatives, in southern Vermont, in response to the PACA. She facilitated a 2 year long community process reflecting needs, preferences, community assets She continues to support cooperative movement through organizational counseling and community engagement.

Cheryl has long been inspired to promote democratic decision-making and cooperation, through serving on boards of organizations using sociocracy, spiritually-inspired and alternative governance models. She continues to teach, public speak and counsel on these varied approaches which require an expanded skill-set for leaders.

Cheryl’s rebelliousness began in college, when she wrote an award winning thesis which offered a Marxist critique of mainstream economics, and then critiqued Marxism on its own terms. This was a core experience, reinforcing her felt sense that current paradigms are temporary constructions, inevitable anomalies and awaiting transformation.

Her group facilitation and conflict resolution approaches are informed by ancient approaches and an understanding of trauma. A life-long student of the ancient religious traditions and the “inner sciences”. She has taught and counseled many who, like her, are eclectic and spiritual explorers. She is authorized to teach traditional Buddhism, and has evolved to incorporate music, art, poetry, journaling and nature as paths of personal development. These mediums influence her style.

Understanding impact of trauma on dialogue and conflict resolution. The experiences of environmental and physical trauma by herself and others have catalyzed Cheryl to research, apply and share with others, her understanding of their relevance to group discussion, mediation and governance.

Stewart Levine is the founder of ResolutionWorks. Stewart is a “Resolutionary”, Counselor, Mediator, Facilitator, Trainer, Author and widely recognized for creating agreement and empowerment in the most challenging circumstances. He improves productivity while saving the enormous cost of conflict. His innovative work with Agreements for Results and his Resolutionary conversational models are unique. As a practicing lawyer he realized that fighting was a very ineffective way of resolving problems. As a marketing executive for AT&T he saw that the reason collaborations fall apart is that people do not spend the time at the beginning of new working relationships to create clarity about what they want to accomplish together, and how they will get there. This is true for employment relationships, teams, joint ventures and all members of any virtual team. His conversational models create Agreements for Results, and a quick return to productivity when working relationships break down. His models for problem solving, collaboration and conflict resolution are used in many Fortune 100 Organizations and have been endorsed by countless thought leaders including the House Judiciary Committee; 3M; American Express; Chevron; Con-Agra; EDS; General Motors; Harvard Law School; Oracle; Safeco; University of San Francisco; U.S. Departments of Agriculture; Navy and many others.

He teaches communication and conflict management skills for The American Management Association, CEO Space and the International Partnering Institute. He is a lecturer at the University of California Berkeley Law School and the MBA program at Dominican University of California. Stewart was recently inducted into the College of Law Practice Management.

Stewart is available for speaking and teaching in a variety of ways. Since the content is universal, he speaks before many industry groups, government agencies and non-profits in a variety of formats from keynotes to two and three day experiential learning programs or leadership retreats.