Lawyers as Healers

In this episode, I’m joined by lawyer, mediator, educator, and author Myrna McCallum for a deep conversation about trauma, emotional intelligence, and the hidden costs of disconnection inside the legal profession.

Myrna shares her personal journey into law, her work developing trauma-informed legal practices, and why many lawyers are rewarded for behaviors that disconnect them from themselves and the people they serve.

We explore:

• what trauma-informed lawyering actually means;
• how stress and trauma affect memory, communication, and decision-making;
• why so many lawyers struggle with burnout, anxiety, and emotional suppression; and
• how emotional intelligence may become one of the most important competencies for the future of the profession.

This conversation also explores a larger question at the heart of the podcast: What might become possible if lawyers saw themselves not only as advocates… but as healers of human conflict?

Myrna’s work can be found at:
myrnamccallum.co

Her podcast, The Trauma Informed Lawyer, is available wherever podcasts are found.

Over the last few episodes, I’ve shared my personal journey away from litigation and toward mediation, coaching, and integrative approaches to conflict.

But the more people I’ve met along the way, the more I’ve realized this isn’t just my story.

There is a quiet evolution happening inside the legal profession.

More and more lawyers are beginning to question whether the adversarial system is actually helping heal conflict — or simply escalating it. Others are exploring mediation, restorative practices, trauma-informed lawyering, coaching, collaborative practice, and new ways of thinking about the role of lawyers in society.

In this episode, I reflect on:

• why so many lawyers feel burned out or disconnected from their work;
• why the profession resists change; and
• why I’m ultimately hopeful about where things may be headed.

This episode is also a transition point for the podcast as I begin bringing on guests who are exploring these same questions from many different perspectives.

Maybe the future of law isn’t about becoming less human in order to survive the profession.

Maybe it’s about becoming more human again.

What do you do when you realize you can’t keep practicing law the way you’ve been trained to?

In the last episode, I shared the story of why I stepped away from litigation.

This episode is about what came next.

I didn’t leave with a plan. I just knew I couldn’t keep doing what I was doing.

In the process of figuring out what else was possible, I was introduced to a world of approaches most lawyers never learn about—mediation, integrative law, and coaching.

Not as abstract ideas, but as real ways of working with people in conflict that felt fundamentally different from litigation.

In this episode, I share:

• what surprised me about mediation
• how I discovered alternative approaches to practicing law
• and how coaching changed the way I think about helping people navigate conflict

This isn’t a roadmap. It’s an exploration of what becomes possible when you start asking a simple question:

What if the way we’ve been trained isn’t the only way?

What happens when the career you’ve built no longer fits who you’re becoming?

In this episode, I share the story behind my transition away from litigation and into a different way of thinking about law, conflict, and my role in the world.

After a decade as an employment litigator, everything looked successful on paper. But internally, I was dealing with constant anxiety and a growing sense of misalignment—between how I was living, how I was practicing law, and the values I was teaching my kids at home.

That tension eventually reached a point where it could no longer be ignored.

This episode is about that moment—and what came after.

I talk about:

• the quiet signals we tend to ignore
• the difference between managing symptoms and addressing root causes
• the experience that forced me to confront what wasn’t working
• and the beginning of a shift toward a more aligned way of living and working

This isn’t a story about having everything figured out.

It’s about what happens when you start asking questions you can’t un-ask.

If something in your life feels off—even if everything looks “fine” from the outside—this conversation is for you.

In this episode of Lawyers as Healers, I explore a strange reality about the legal profession: lawyers spend their careers working in human conflict, yet most receive little or no training in the basics of conflict itself.

Law school teaches doctrine, legal analysis, and how to pass the bar exam. But it rarely teaches the psychology of conflict or the communication tools that help people engage in healthy conflict.

Drawing on my own experience as a litigator and my later training in mediation, I reflect on the moment I realized how much of this knowledge was missing from my legal education—and why that absence shapes the way lawyers approach disputes.

If lawyers are meant to serve as “healers of human conflict,” we may need to examine what is missing from our training.

This episode explores the concept of lawyers as healers and the tension between the original intent of becoming a lawyer and the reality of legal practice. It delves into the childhood influence of becoming a lawyer, the motivation for becoming a lawyer, the shift that occurs in law school, and the incoherence of legal practice.

Takeaways

• Lawyers as healers
• The tension between the original intent of becoming a lawyer and the reality of legal practice

Chapters

• 00:00 Introduction to Lawyers as Healers
• 07:51 Motivation for Becoming a Lawyer
• 13:11 The Shift in Legal Education
• 18:12 The Incoherence of Legal Practice

In the first episode of Lawyers as Healers, host Dave Albrechta introduces the central idea behind the podcast: that the legal profession may have a deeper calling than simply resolving disputes. Reflecting on a quote from Chief Justice Warren Burger and his own journey from a decade of employment litigation to mediation and coaching, Dave explores why the concept of lawyers as healers of human conflict initially seemed absurd to him—and why he now believes it may be essential to the future of the profession. This episode sets the stage for the series by examining burnout in adversarial practice, the limits of settlement and resolution, and why a more human-centered approach to conflict may be needed now more than ever.