Before we shape the law, the law shapes us.

It’s time to shape-shift

Explore the Learning Journey

From altered states to altered systems.

What is embodied lawyering?

Embodied Lawyering is the practice of cultivating the human capacities beneath legal expertise, and is the evolution of the “Psychedelic Lawyering” movement pioneered by the Psychedelic Bar Association in 2020 and the deepening implementation of the PBA North Star Invitation. 

Embodied Lawyering explores how presence, perception, relationship, ethics, and self-awareness shape the way lawyers think, advise, negotiate, advocate, and lead.

Rather than focusing solely on what lawyers know, Embodied Lawyering explores who lawyers become through the practice itself. It embraces the reality that the practice of law is a creative act, and in so doing, we take more responsibility for our impact and set clearer intentions for the present and future we are helping to shape.

Beyond Expertise

Legal expertise remains indispensable, and the resources available with advances in technology make conventional wisdom ever more widely available. Yet many of the challenges shaping our world today require something more human and more humane: discernment, relational intelligence, ethical maturity, and the capacity to navigate uncertainty with integrity. Embodied Lawyering explores the development of these capacities and their role in the future of legal practice.

  • Presence

    The capacity to remain grounded, attentive, and responsive amidst uncertainty, conflict, and complexity. Presence shapes how we listen, decide, advocate, and lead.

  • Relationship

    Law does not operate in isolation. Every contract, negotiation, dispute, and policy exists within a web of relationships. Relationship explores trust, reciprocity, conflict, and the human dimensions beneath legal practice.

  • Stewardship

    Lawyers help shape the conditions through which collective life unfolds. Stewardship invites participants to consider the long-term consequences of their work and the responsibilities that accompany influence, power, and service.

"We cannot create life-serving institutions while remaining estranged from the very qualities through which life becomes possible. Presence, relationship, reciprocity, responsibility. These are values that must become virtues which must become the conditions of participation from which our future systems emerge.”

— Ryan James Kemp, Designer of Embodied Lawyering

The Modules

Month One:  Welcome to Inquiring into the Lawyer Lineage: Introduction

  • Why Inquire into the Lawyer Lineage?

  • Law as the Coding of the Economic System

  • What does "psychedelic" mean?

Month Two:  Foundational Knowledge

  • Law: Etymological Roots & Ontological Shifts: From Kinship to Domination

  • Economic (Historical) - Redefining the role of law in the modern economy

  • Ecological (Qualitative) - Becoming reacquainted with the laws of nature

  • Ecological (Quantitative) - The state of Mother Earth

  • Systemic (Nested) - Engaging Lawyers in Systems Evolution

Month Three:  Our Inner Compass

  • Soul Hygiene - The Purpose and Process of Grief and Praise

  • Studying the Traditions of Ancestry: Reconnecting With our True Nature

  • Brain Science - Revitalizing Right Brain Function and Mind-Body Communication

  • Seeking Equilibrium & Justice - Understanding the Worldview Continuum

Month Four:  Developing Our Relational Capacities

  • Studying Traditions of Gratitude

  • Appreciating the Gravity of Language

  • Empathy as Solvent and Trust Builder

  • Tricksters and Sacred Reversals

Month Five:  The Cosmic Context of Legal Systems

  • The Legal Profession - What's in the way?

  • What is time but the forever now?

  • Unpacking "Purpose"

  • The Paradox of Boundaries

  • Siloes vs. Building Trust

Month Six:  Being the Evolution

  • What might "Psychedelic Lawyering" in your practice look like?

  • Ownership as the fiction of "Discovery"

  • From Transactions to Relations

  • If corporations are people, why not rivers?... and other Jedi mind tricks

  • Dispute resolution as Relationship Repair not Retribution

What Changed?

Across the pilot, participants began describing lawyering in remarkably different ways, as a practice grounded in:

Authenticity

"Showing up from my authentic self."

Expanded Awareness

"Practicing law with curiosity, humility, and compassion."

Presence

"A human who practices law in a present, holistic, and empathetic manner."

Stewardship

"Valuing sustainable outcomes over billable hours."

Relationship

"Attuning to myself, my client, and the wider environment."

Integrity

"Grounded presence, relational trust, lineage, and responsibility."

"In civilized life, law floats in a sea of ethics."

-Chief Justice Earl Warren

What happens after the insight…?

Beyond psychedelics

Embodied Lawyering explores the process and the content of how profound moments of insight become enduring values; how values become virtues, virtues become habits, and habits become systems that shape our institutions and society. 

How do we as human beings who practice law become the reality we touch in the expanded state?

Designed for legal professionals, the program draws lessons from the psychedelic renaissance and the deeper challenge of translating awareness into action, values into practice, and individual transformation into institutional culture.

Through systems thinking, reflective inquiry, contemplative practice, and collective learning, participants examine the assumptions underlying legal culture while developing the relational intelligence, integrity, context awareness, and coherence needed to navigate complexity.

As lawyers help shape the agreements, governance structures, and systems that organize collective life, the quality of our institutions becomes inseparable from the qualities we cultivate within ourselves, making the development of the practitioner inseparable from the future of the profession itself.

The Learning Journey

Embodied Lawyering is a learning journey exploring what becomes possible when legal expertise is paired with presence, discernment, relational intelligence, and ethical maturity. Through inquiry, dialogue, systems thinking, contemplative practice, and collective learning, participants investigate the capacities required for law in a time of profound societal transformation.

Proven in Practice

The program was successfully piloted over six months with 17 legal professionals from diverse practice areas. Participants described the experience as transformative, reporting meaningful shifts in their legal practice, professional identity, and personal development.

Many found a rare community of peers committed to integrity, relationship, and restorative approaches to justice. The pilot has since informed the continued evolution of Embodied Lawyering as a cornerstone initiative of the Psychedelic Bar Association.

Apply now

Our Guides

Nicole Howell

Founder

Nicole Howell (she/they) is a lawyer, mediator, and contemplative practitioner whose work explores the intersection of law, embodiment, and human transformation. She co-founded the Psychedelic Bar Association in 2020 to support the integration of self-realization into legal practice and co-created the Inquiring into the Lawyer Lineage (INTO) program with Ryan Kemp.

Since 2014, Nicole has served as outside general counsel to California's commercial cannabis industry, advised her local community on a wide range of legal matters, and worked as a conflict coach and mediator, helping individuals, families, and organizations navigate difficult conversations through understanding-based, generative dialogue.

"Embodied Lawyering" reflects both her professional purpose and her ongoing collaboration with Ryan to reimagine what legal practice can become.

Designer

Ryan James Kemp

Ryan James Kemp is a relational systems futurist, depth educator, and founder of (re)Biz, the world's first systems-thinking un/school. His work explores how shifts in perception shape leadership, institutions, and the futures we collectively create. Drawing on fifteen years of work across nearly seventy countries with leaders, organizations, and Indigenous knowledge holders, he helps cultivate deeper sense-making, relational intelligence, and systems awareness in times of complexity and change.

FAQs

  • Most professional development focuses on what lawyers know. Embodied Lawyering explores who lawyers become through the practice itself, and how that development influences the systems, institutions, and communities they help steward.

  • No. While the journey emerged through the Psychedelic Bar Association in collaboration with (re)Biz, its focus extends beyond psychedelics themselves. Embodied Lawyering explores the human capacities beneath legal practice and is relevant to lawyers across all areas of law.

  • The journey is designed for lawyers, judges, mediators, policy professionals, law students, and legal leaders who are interested in the relationship between personal development, professional practice, and societal transformation. Participants come from diverse legal backgrounds and areas of practice.

  • Participants become part of a growing community of legal professionals exploring how law, ethics, relationship, and human development intersect. Beyond the formal sessions, the journey creates space for meaningful dialogue, trusted relationships, and ongoing inquiry with peers committed to the future of the profession.

  • Graduates will be initiated into the “Embodied Lawyering” Community of Practice where they can share insights, support, encourage, and collaborate on projects that implement these new ways of being and practice, from an embodied, relational perspective.