Warrior One

Judi Cohen founded Warrior One in 2009 to address the profound challenges of a life in the law. Impacted by more than 25 years of living surrounded by the conflict inherent in the adversary system, the stressors of practicing and teaching, and a changing profession and world, and having witnessed at close range the suffering of her colleagues, Judi put her decades of mindfulness study and practice into trainings designed specifically to support our profession.

Our goal is to provide tools to manage anxiety, stress, overwhelm, and disillusionment, and cultivate happiness and wellbeing, while remaining expert and passionate advocates. We’ve heard from thousands of lawyers and law students whose intention is to make a positive contribution through their work, and who’ve found that adding mindfulness to their toolbox is the best way to do that in a way that also protects – and enhances – their own happiness and wellbeing.

Mindfulness trains us to cultivate present moment awareness. It supports our ability to face difficulties with courage, resilience, and self-compassion. It offers us tools to understand the (legal) mind at the most insightful level. And it enables us to create a joyful life in the law, one that both elevates intellectual and emotional intelligence, and supports the continuing cultivation of fundamental wellbeing – wellbeing that is grounded in connection to self and others, a sense of belonging, and fundamental happiness.

Our programs are unique because they are designed by lawyers specifically for the legal mind. Whether you’re ready to apply to the Mindfulness in Law Teacher Training, interested in our courses, or want to enjoy our weekly Wake Up Call live or via podcast, we hope you’ll jump in and discover the power of mindfulness. We’re proud of our record of success in helping legal professionals do just that, and we’d be honored to support you.

Warrior One was named after the ancient Tibetan legend of the Shambhala Warriors.

According to that legend, when there is chaos in life and in the world, the Shambhala Warriors will emerge. These warriors will wear no insignia but they will be imbued with the moral and physical courage to point to our common humanity and persuade warring factions to lay down their arms. And they will succeed because they will explain that the weapons afflicting us are not made of explosives but arise from the ways we choose to communicate and act. In other words, they are made by the human mind.

And as such, they can be dismantled by the human mind, using only two weapons: wisdom and compassion. Compassion, to realize that our own wellbeing, the wellbeing of others, and the wellbeing of our planet, are connected. And wisdom, to enable us to be open-minded, thoughtful, and discerning, and to see things as they are and not as we wish them to be – the same way we’re taught to view the facts of a case.

As Plato is said to have written, “Be kind, for everyone is fighting a hard battle.” Wisdom provides the clarity to see that this is true. Compassion provides the tools to do it.

At Warrior One, we believe lawyers are the Shambhala Warriors…or should be. Our job is to fight our clients’ battles with compassion and wisdom, and to model that for others. When we do, our relationships with adversaries, clients, colleagues, students, and ourselves, are different, better, transformed.

Our world is in need of transformation. It demands our expertise. In the trenches of public interest, in prosecutors’ and defenders’ offices, in labor and family law and estate planning, in rarified corporate law environments, mindfulness enables us to fight our battles in more compassionate, wiser ways.

Our intellect is powerful. Our influence is broad and deep. We cannot not – and should not want to – take anything but the wisest, most compassionate tack. Starting right now. As the great scholar and judge Hillel the Elder once said (while standing on one foot), “That which is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow. That is the whole law; the rest is the explanation.”

And he also said, “If not now, when?”