Virginia Robin

Founder at Lawyers for Love

Higher consciousness lawyer, TedX speaker, conflict alchemist, author, visionary

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Virginia Robin is a unique individual. She is a lawyer, a qualified yoga instructor, author of a book on how to resolve dissatisfaction in the legal profession, and a TedX Speaker. Today she runs a practice training lawyers and clients in love-based wisdom, called Lawyers for Love. It’s fair to say that Virginia is on a mission to bring the wisdom of love to our profession.

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Bio

Show notes

Links

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Bio:

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Virginia Robin is a lawyer on a mission. Until early 2021, she was a partner in a legal practice in Mornington, Victoria, Australia. Her TedX talk is titled ‘Lawyers are trained to break the law’ and is a riveting 15-minute video well worth catching on YouTube.  Her book ‘Let’s Kiss all the Lawyers, Said No-one Ever' is a light-hearted look at the darker parts of the profession - depression and discontentment. 

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The practice she has co-founded - called Lawyers for Love - is currently exploring an alternate platform for individuals that supports the discovery of authentic selves, by using conflict as a catalyst. Authenticity is revealed using what is called LIOTECnology (Love Is Of The Essence Consciousness technology), where lawyers can be trained to build a more fulfilling practice based on the system that they must still must work within. The practice teaches lawyers to shift perspectives so that every conflicted client will see the lawyer as a trusted facilitator.

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Show notes:

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• [01:52] Virginia recounts her journey into law, from a legal receptionist to law school to becoming a partner at the very same firm.

• [04:16] Destiny had more in store for Virginia, in the form of a pair of high heels that led to her downfall, literally, and discovery of yoga to fix her bruised knees and ego. 

• [5:45] Her passion for yoga evolved into a yoga training diploma and her entrée into the world of ancient philosophy and principles, which she sought to apply to the law.

• [9:40] Her next step was to write a book to introduce lawyers to another way of thinking about the mental health problems afflicting the profession.  

• [13:22] Virginia has not looked back since transferring out of her legal practice to building her new project, Lawyers for Love.

• [14:44] Virginia talks about how we all have unconscious 'rules' we have developed from childhood, often imposed by our family or 'tribe'.  Adopting these rules often leads to confusion and inauthenticity. We can free ourselves by consciously recognising the unconscious rules we carry around with us.

• [20:16] Virginia talks about her conflict alchemy philosophy - how as lawyers, we can use the conflicts our clients come to us for as catalysts for recognising and addressing their unconscious rules.

• [22:30] Virginia discusses the 'shadow' work she does, which applies to individuals as well as society when we ignore or cast blame on things that actually reflect the parts of ourselves or society that trouble us most but we don't want to accept. Integrating the shadow parts of ourselves validates the self and promotes healing. 

• [27:32] Conflict and war arise from an inability to accept another perspective. Our current legal system punishes perspectives whereas a loving system honours different perspectives and seeks to teach.  

• [30:21] We talk about the modern type of shamanism that Virginia practises in helping lawyers identify their unconscious rules.

• [34:55] Lawyers for Love is beta-testing a new platform for lawyers that will allow them to take the ideas and practices into their own legal practice.

• [36:12] Virginia tells me that the High Court of Australia has recently discussed the organic connection Indigenous people have to the land, which is a first step to recognising the inter-connectedness of all things. 

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Links:

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Lawyers for Love:  www.lawyersforlove.love

Virginia's TedX Talk, Lawyers are Trained to Break the Law.

Virginia's book: Let's Kiss All the Lawyers, Said No-one Ever!: How Conflict Can Benefit You.

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A summary of Donoghue v Stevenson [1932] AC 562, the classic 'snail and bottle' case that established the concept of duty of care - the foundation stone of the tort of negligence - and ties it to the principle of 'love thy neighbour'. 

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Love v Commonwealth 2020 [HCA] 3 a case that tested whether the Commonwealth's constitutional power to make laws for 'naturalisation and aliens' extended to Aboriginal Australians (by a 4:3 majority the High Court of Australia held it did not). In Gordon J's judgment at 101, there is a discussion in obiter of the nature of Aboriginal peoples' spiritual and metaphysical connection to land and a line of cases recognising this, beginning with Blackburn J in the Gove Land Rights case, Milirrpum v Nabalco Pty Ltd (1971) 17 FLR 141 at 167. 

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Carl Jung and shadow work: An article about the shadow self as Jung conceptualised it, projection, the origins of shadow, enlightenment and the benefits of shadow work.

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Shamanism and soul retrieval: An article on shamanism and soul retrieval, which is an energetic recalling of lost parts of self.

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