There is some tendency, with the case method, for the study of law to be something like the study of chess or the analysis of a bridge hand. When analyzing the law in intricate detail, it may be hard to keep in mind the vital fact that the problems really relate to people . . . .” Erwin N. Griswold

Although, historically, some may have thought of lawyers as walking talking brains, more recently we have seen increasing recognition that law is a people profession. After all, lawyers spend a substantial portion of their time interviewing and counseling clients; negotiating and mediating; conducting discovery, factual research, and due diligence; and advocating orally and in writing. While these tasks do require good legal analytical skills they also require other traits relating to lawyers’ ability to work with people. And, it is important to recognize that lawyers’ own mental states can impact how well or poorly they do their jobs.

Within the last ten years some legal academics and also practitioners in a variety of legal fields began to appreciate that psychology—the science of how people think, feel, and behave, can be very helpful to attorneys’ practice of law. Expanding far beyond the long-time recognition that psychology can help attorneys pick juries or be persuasive in the courtroom, such commentators began to discuss how psychology might inform legal writing, legal ethics, conceptions of justice,10 and attorney wellness and success. My co-author Jennifer Robbennolt and I brought together some aspects of this field in our book Psychology for Lawyers: Understanding the Human Factors in Negotiation, Litigation, and Decision Making.

Yet, while a number of commentators were applying psychology to lawyering, they were not necessarily drawing from the same aspects of psychology as one another, nor connecting to each other through their writing or in person. Some commentators focused particularly on cognitive and social psychology, some on insights drawn from clinical psychology, some on the benefits of mindfulness meditation, some on attorneys’ struggles with alcohol and substance abuse, and some on neuroscience. Even my lengthy book, with Jennifer Robbennolt, addressed only certain aspects of psychology and lawyering, focusing quite little for example on insights drawn from clinical psychology, abnormal psychology, or neuroscience.

A number of us thought it would be highly informative as well as fun to try to bring together as many of us as possible who had been separately toiling in the fields of psychology and lawyering. Thus, UNLV’s Boyd School of Law and its Saltman Center for Conflict Resolution decided to host a conference entitled Psychology and Lawyering: Coalescing the Field. Two other schools with strong programs in the area, the University of Illinois and U.C. Davis School of Law, generously made financial contributions in support of the conference. When we came up with the idea for the conference we were not sure how many scholars would be willing and able to attend, particularly at their own expense. We were shocked and thrilled by the outpouring of interest by professors and practitioners, from a variety of fields, from around the world.

The conference, which took place in February 2014, was indeed a fun and highly productive event. We learned a great deal from one another and vowed to gather again to further our connections. The conference helped spark a blog on behavioral legal ethics, and much talk about potential future conferences.

Today we are very pleased to present the written version of the conference, which we hope will further advance and connect this field. Like the conference, this symposium covers a broad array of topics. We have tried to group all the articles into five broad thematic groups: interviewing and counseling; legal advocacy; behavioral legal ethics; attorney and student personal wellbeing; and fairness and justice.

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