J. Kim Wright, J.D.

In 1999 when Kim Wright began talking about law as a healing profession, most people laughed. In 1999 and 2000 she wrote a watershed website, www.renaissancelawyer.com, which brought together over a dozen different approaches to law under one umbrella and she declared it a movement. While people often stop and shake their heads when law and healing are spoken in the same sentence, Kim is now speaking to mainstream audiences - the National Association of Women Judges in October, 2009 - and she is writing a book for the American Bar Association about this movement. Her message is for a new approach to law practice that is also very old: what if lawyers as wise advisers who help to heal conflict, were peacemakers and problem-solvers?

In February, 2008, Kim gave up her home and office to work full-time on a new web site for the movement, www.CuttingEdgeLaw.com. Since then she has been traveling around the country interviewing lawyers and judges about their innovative, positive approaches to law practice and judging. The ultimate optimist, she's done so with very little outside funding, often camping and staying with friends, believing that fulfilling her mission of transforming the legal profession will lead to new opportunities.