mindful students and mindful judges, and the construction of the Mindfulness in Law Society Student Division began.
The program picked up 15 chapters the year it was created and has welcomed three more additions since. Some of the schools boasting a MILS chapter include Columbia Law School and Drexel University. Georgia State, being one of those first fifteen chapters, garnered forty student participants in its first semester, sixty in its second,
and ninety in the current spring semester.
Austin facilitates the development of these programs at other universities, using what he calls the“ Georgia State model.” He says this model’ s approach is two-pronged. The first installment being a six-week course introducing the practice of mindfulness to 1L students. He says the goal of the introduction program
is to allow students to gain some practical experience actually performing the techniques, so that once they have recognized some of the potential benefits in their own lives, they will want to continue those practices after the introductory program ends.
The second prong is joining the Mindfulness in Law Society Chapter, which facilitates the continued learning and practice of mindfulness for law students through a variety of activities. From weekly yoga
sessions to hosting guest speakers, the program employs a number of techniques to help students relieve their stress.
Austin says he wants GSU Law students to have a less stressful law school experience, but it is more than just stress reduction.“ I think that a lot of the stress that we put on ourselves is unwarranted … and while these grades are important and this experience in many ways defines where we go, in other ways we are still students, we are still in school and we should not be viewing ourselves any differently or negatively because of what we produce in this space. I want that to sort of be a culture change and I want Georgia State to be a model for that culture change,” says Austin.
Although the program has been extremely successful at GSU, both Austin and Professor Scott envision the possibilities extending far beyond the GSU campus. It has always been a primary objective of both to keep the program open to students, faculty, and staff, but they would like to start getting practicing attorneys around Atlanta involved. They are working to establish Continuing Legal Education credits for Atlanta attorneys to attend instructional meetings at GSU over a course of several weeks to learn mindful practices to be applied in the workplace.
Austin points out providing clients with counsel is one of the most important components of being an attorney.“ There’ s many opportunities when being a lawyer means being a counselor to someone and if
16 April 2017