05/30/2026
Saturday morning thoughts: Dignity is not reserved for the dead and the dying.
It belongs to the living, breathing human beings sitting across from lawyers in courtrooms and legal offices right now — people who are poor, vulnerable, victimized, marginalized, racialized, and Indigenous, navigating one of the most intimidating and dehumanizing systems we have built.
And far too often, the lawyers on the other side of that table don’t see them. Not because they can’t. But because no one taught them to.
Legal training sharpens the mind but rarely touches the heart. Emotional intelligence and relational practice — the capacity to recognize who is sitting in front of you and respond to them with dignity — are dismissed as soft skills. But there is nothing soft about this.
Centering humanity, holding space for vulnerability, and showing up with dignity inside someone else’s pain while managing your own reaction and fighting to stay emotionally regulated is one of the most courageous and demanding things a human being can do. It requires skill, practice, and a willingness to be changed by what you witness. This is not softness, it’s strength.
And until the legal profession stops treating emotional intelligence as optional, we will keep producing lawyers who are technically brilliant but disconnected, harmful and ignorant.
Anyway, what do you think about on Saturday mornings??
