In this episode of Lawyers as Healers, I’m joined by J. Kim Wright, author, leadership coach, legal innovator, and one of the guiding voices of the global Integrative Law Movement.

This conversation is particularly personal for me. Kim coached my wife and me during a significant transition in our legal practice and lives. Her work helped me recognize that there were other ways to practice law—and ultimately helped lay the foundation for this podcast.

Rather than revisit Kim’s remarkable career, I wanted to explore what she has learned from decades of helping lawyers rediscover who they are and build practices that reflect their values.

We talk about the professional masks lawyers wear, the fear of being different, and how even small acts of authenticity can create meaningful change. Sometimes it starts with something as simple as replacing a conference table with comfortable chairs, changing how we dress, or giving ourselves permission to show up differently.

Kim also offers a beautiful explanation of Integrative Law: not simply a collection of alternative legal practices, but an internal shift that begins when we reconnect with our values and allow them to shape how we practice.

We explore trauma within the legal system, the importance of community, what lawyers can learn from actually listening to their clients, and why the adversarial system still has an important place in certain circumstances.

And because Kim was my own coach, we spend time discussing something close to my heart: navigating that uncomfortable space where you know your old way of practicing no longer fits, but you have no idea what comes next.

At its heart, this conversation is about finding the courage to be yourself, remembering why you became a lawyer, and discovering what becomes possible when your professional life reflects the person you actually are.

• Why lawyers struggle to step outside traditional professional identities
• The fear of being different and the vulnerability of authenticity
• How small changes can transform a legal practice
• What Integrative Law actually means
• Why personal transformation must accompany systemic change
• Trauma, moral injury, and the adversarial system
• The importance of community in creating lasting change
• Coaching lawyers through uncertainty and transition
• Creating a personal touchstone to stay connected to your values
• What it truly means for lawyers to become healers of human conflict

J. Kim Wright — Coaching, writing, and other resources:
https://jkimwright.com/

The Integrative Law Movement:
https://www.integrativelaw.com/

Kim's books include:

• Lawyers as Peacemakers
• Lawyers as Changemakers
• Trauma-Informed Law (co-editor)

Guest: J. Kim Wright — Author, coach, legal innovator, and Integrative Law pioneer.

Host: Dave Albrechta — Mediator, coach, recovering litigator, and host of Lawyers as Healers.

Interested in coaching to transform your own practice? Email dave@tallgrasscollective.org.

In this episode of Lawyers as Healers, I’m joined by Holly Hedley, a specialist health, employment, privacy, and human rights lawyer from New Zealand.

Holly is the founder of Dawn Legal and is completing a Borrin Foundation Women Leaders in Law Fellowship exploring trauma-informed legal practice for Aotearoa New Zealand.

Our conversation explores Holly’s move from large-firm practice into her own practice, where she has more freedom to approach legal work in a compassionate, restorative, and human-centered way.

We talk about gender expectations in law, parenting, birth trauma, vicarious trauma, and the often invisible weight lawyers carry from the work they do. Holly shares a powerful story about being stopped in her tracks by a memory from a difficult case while walking with her infant son — a moment that led her to ask deeper questions about trauma, legal work, and what lawyers absorb over time.

A major theme of this conversation is that lawyers are often expected to be detached, rational, and unemotional. But that does not mean we are unaffected. Holly challenges the idea that good lawyering requires us to ignore our own humanity or the humanity of the people we serve.

We also discuss what trauma-informed legal practice can look like in practical terms: understanding boundaries, knowing when to refer clients to other supports, creating space between difficult meetings, using language more carefully, and asking one simple question before sending a letter, submission, or judgment:

How does this land?

At its heart, this episode is about practicing law with clarity, compassion, and power — without pretending lawyers have to become therapists or stop being lawyers.

As Holly puts it, maybe the invitation is simply to find the human way of lawyering that is truly yours.

• Holly’s transition from large-firm practice to Dawn Legal
• trauma-informed legal practice in New Zealand
• gender expectations, parenting, and law firm culture
• why trauma may appear in every area of legal practice
• the myth of the detached lawyer
• supervision, reflection, and better support for lawyers
• boundaries between legal work and therapeutic work
• writing with heart, clarity, and power

Dawn Legal:
https://www.dawnlegal.co.nz/

Trauma-Informed Legal Practice project:
https://www.dawnlegal.co.nz/trauma-informed-legal-practice

Borrin Foundation Fellowship:
https://www.borrinfoundation.nz/women-leaders-in-law-fellowship-for-holly-hedley/

Heart-Centered Judgment:
https://www.qlsproctor.com.au/2025/08/nz-judge-writes-letter-to-child-as-judgment/

Holly Hedley
Founder, Dawn Legal
Specialist health, employment, privacy, and human rights lawyer

Dave Albrechta
Mediator, coach, recovering litigator, and host of Lawyers as Healers

Interested in coaching to transform your practice?

Email dave@tallgrasscollective.org

In this episode of Lawyers as Healers, I’m joined by Gina Steele, a lawyer-turned-coach who helps attorneys move from overwhelm and exhaustion toward fulfillment, energy, and meaningful impact in their careers.

Before becoming a coach, Gina practiced law for nearly two decades, including work in patent litigation and patent prosecution. Her own experience with burnout eventually led to a serious health crisis — and then to a deeper exploration of mindfulness, neuroscience, nervous system regulation, and what it actually takes for lawyers to thrive.

This conversation explores the connection between lawyer well-being and the larger role lawyers play in society. Gina makes a powerful point early in the conversation: we need to heal lawyers so lawyers can become better healers.

We talk about how law school and legal practice often train lawyers into scarcity, competition, stress, and constant fight-or-flight. When lawyers are dysregulated, exhausted, and overwhelmed, they lose access to empathy, creativity, collaboration, and the fuller perspective needed to help clients make good decisions.

Gina also shares practical tools for lawyers, including mindfulness, breathwork, movement, EFT tapping, orienting practices, and the importance of building regular habits that help regulate the nervous system.

We also discuss the neuroscience of civility, why professionalism cannot just be a vague instruction to “be nice,” and how lawyers can learn to see conflict not as a fight, but as a call for collaborative problem-solving.

At its heart, this episode is about why lawyer well-being is not separate from the future of law.

It may be the foundation of it.

• Gina’s path from law to coaching
• law school, scarcity, and competition
• burnout, stress, and Gina’s health crisis
• mindfulness and nervous system regulation
• why exhausted lawyers lose access to empathy
• the neuroscience of civility
• fight, flight, freeze, and legal practice
• how lawyers affect the nervous systems of clients and colleagues
• tools lawyers can use to regulate themselves
• why conflict can be reframed as collaborative problem-solving
• how coaching can help lawyers reconnect with meaning, values, and impact

Steele Leadership:
https://steeleadership.com/

Email:
gsteele@steeleadership.com

Gina Steele
Lawyer, coach, and founder of Steele Leadership

Dave Albrechta
Mediator, coach, recovering litigator, and host of Lawyers as Healers.