For the past 20 years, the legal profession has been taking note and exploring the potential role mindfulness practices can play in the law. Here in Florida, in the last three weeks alone, members of the Florida Bar’s Tax Law Section, Tampa’s Ferguson White Inns of Court, and the Southern District of Florida’s Bankruptcy Bar Association all participated in mindfulness programs. While such programming decisions involve the input of more than one person, spearheading these efforts were Christopher Callahan, Gwen Daniels, and Grace Robson, respectively.

While the practice of mindfulness can be useful for many reasons, its growing presence in the law responds to concerns for attorney and law-student wellness. Ours is a demanding profession where the ability to anticipate problems, engage in adversarial and often hostile contests, strive for perfection, and manage intense workloads can, amid time pressures, client demands, and fatigue, become counterproductive and fuel anxiety, anger, doubt, fear, depression, and overwhelm. At such times the inner critic can be relentless to ensure we succeed — or perhaps its primary mission is to make sure we do not “fail.”

Steven Keeva, managing editor of the ABA Journal at the turn of the 21st century, was concerned for the wellbeing of lawyer and saw the importance of contemplative practices, like mindfulness. In “Practicing from the Inside Out,” an article he contributed to the Harvard Negotiation Law Review’s 2002 symposium on mindfulness in law, he wrote: