You are just the kind of person the Sul livan Ballou Fund seeks to recognize and affirm. Seeing a stark need to reorient the adversarial, destructive nature of legal practice, you made it your business to find alternative strategies and to assume a leadership role in the movement to make lawyers peacemakers, problem solvers, and healers of conflicts. For over I 0 years now you have traveled the country speaking, educating, and training about this new paradigm. You have performed a great service as perhaps the chief scribe of this movement with the extensive materials and stories you have collected and made available at your CuttingEdgeLaw website and with your highly acclaimed book, Lawyers as Peacemakers, Practicing Holistic, ProblemSolving Law. And you are succeeding in gaining mainstream acceptance of your ideas- not only has the American Bar Association published your book, but in 2009 it named you one of 50 Legal Rebels who are "finding new ways to pracitice law"
Now, many lawyers have advocated for change with some success. But your story stands out for the pure service it exemplifies. You have not sought fame or fortune for this intense work but do it out of your heart's passion to find a better way to serve others. In that respect, this latest chapter in your life is exactly consistent with the heartfelt service to others you offered raising 16 children, including birth children, step-children, and other kids who needed a home, as a domestic violence advocate and program director, as a guardian ad litem representing abused and neglected children and as a holistic divorce practicioner. It is just this kind of pure heart energy that creates genuine, long-lasting improvement in how people live together.
We are honored to be able to recognize your life of Jove and service to
others with this modest award. You perfectly reflect the energy Sullivan
Ballou expressed so clearly. You are a model for what each of us can do
with that spirit.
This award is yours to use as you choose - for some helpful training or materials in your work, for a little well-deserved rest and recreation, or maybe just to pay some bills. We would appreciate your letting us know in about six months how you used this award and how it affected you. Congratulations!
Elissa and Bruce Peterson, Founding Members