Global Legal Changemakers Café, London.

Written on 05 July 2019.

Having spent the day at the Purposeful Values Based Contracts Workshop in London, led by American Bar Association Author and Lawyer J. Kim Wright, we then hopped in a Black Cab and made our way to the evening Global Legal Changemakers' Café! The Café was led by UK based lawyer Rhiannon Thomas, originally of South Africa and part of Forrest Webb, a Legal Organisation that has collaborated to set up Global Legal Changemakers Cafés. I interviewed Rhiannon and asked her to please share the reason the Café was set up, what its aims are and how it works?

“We were inspired to set up these Cafes by what we felt was a need for like-minded lawyers to connect and to spend time together in a place where they could be themselves and talk about things that interest them. Our Cafes are a bit like an antidote to legal practice in that we use time very inefficiently! We start off with 3 minutes of silence and then we spend some time having a Speaker who presents only for 6 minutes on a topic and then in the Café there is an opportunity to reflect on that and share our thoughts and feelings.

In order to get people to be present and join into the group, we do a check-in and depending on the mood of the Facilitator, or how many people are in the Café that check-in can take on a variety of forms, but generally its saying who you are and how you are feeling at that very moment and maybe what you’ve brought with you from your day. At the end of the Café we do a check-out where people generally share something they have learned, or something they have loved, or will take away from the Café and we also end with 3 minutes of silence, or a short 1 minute”.

I very much enjoyed the Legal Changemakers’ Café. It incorporates meditation and mindfulness; everyone is acknowledged; inspirational ideas flow and are exchanged. The Café therefore also provides an opportunity for networking and building the ‘tribe’ of like-minded Lawyers and the exciting possibility of future global collaborations.

For further information, please contact: amber@amberlaw.com 

Pic of Lawyer Rhiannon Thomas from Global Legal Changemakers Cafe