Initiative Scuola Legale Diffusa
In this situation of permanent instability, the greatest risk is that of losing the most solid certainties of the national tradition and becoming overwhelmed by events that can rock the entire legal services system, with unfavorable consequences.
Today we announce the launch of Scuola Legale Diffusa (SLD), a framework to embrace the changing world of work to support the needs of both lawyers and clients.
The article on Scuola Legale Diffusa titled “To Take Law Seriously. Via quantum physics, mechanics.” by Prof. ON Kuyan, Dr, PhD, is the scientific foundation for our approach.
We started engaging in “law schools built around people” in the early 90s, and it took us thirty years to define the studio legale diffuso model as we see it today.
While we were researching on the topic, starting from
John Henry Merryman ''The Italian Style'' I, II (1965),
we understood we could not launch the Scuola Legale Diffusa concept with no theory supporting the unique model of legal services delivering, nor could we do without protecting the model by adding precise contents.
Therefore our research followed a double path:
"Many professions can be performed with the brain and not with the heart.
But not the lawyer.
The lawyer cannot be a pure logician,
nor an ironic skeptic. First of all,
the lawyer must be the heart. He is an altruist, someone who knows how to understand other people and make them live in themselves. The lawyer takes on their pains and feels their ambitions like his own.The lawyer is a profession of understanding, dedication and charity. This is why we love lawyer toga: we would like that, when the day comes, this black rag is placed on our coffin: to it we are fond of because we know that it has served to dry some tears, to relieve some headache, to repress some abuse: and above all to revive in human hearts the faith in the winning justice, without this faith the life does not deserve to be lived"
- Piero Calamandrei
The first path aimed at identifying the basic prerequisites to make the SLD concept become reality and have an economic feasibility, together with a value for its territory;
The second path aimed at creating a new model of the “Scuola Legale Diffusa”, not simply modifying legal services delivering models that already existed. But more than that, we wanted to create a model with cultural roots in Italy and in the history of Mediterranean style of life (legal life, icluding). A model which would be unique as well as “made in Italy”.
On this second aspect we investigated Italian Albergo Diffuso and the Japanese Ryokan model,
both of which fascinated us.
We were engaged by the opportunity to create the “law school” model, completely different from the UK/US “standard”, leading in Europe and Italy.
The most beautiful thing we take from Albergo Diffuso and Ryokan is to be more than just a place to get professional legal services, but an opportunity to experience the traditional Mediterranean style of life, incorporating features of the dominant force in Italian legal life: the traditional doctrine. It has seemed to us that the most productive approach to Mediterranean (Italian) Legal Style is by way of prevailing Italian attitudes towards law and the legal process. The Italian way of doing law and the Italian way of viewing law are closely interrelated and consequently an understanding of the Italian Legal Outlook is essential to comprehension of the Italian style. The norms, institutions and processes of Italian law become truly Italian only when seen through Italian eyes. This orthodox pattern of assumptions and attitudes, although clearly in decline, still sets the legal tone in Italy and is still characteristic of the Italian style: the theory of the sources of law; the principal divisions of the law; and the ideology, content, and arrangement of the Italian Civil Code of 1942. Each of these topics provides additional perspective on Italian law and on the Mediterranean (Italian) legal style. These topics also link with the interplay between the traditional view of the legal process and the great political, economic, and social changes that have swept over Italy during the last century. These events inevitably have left a powerful imprint on the country’s law and legal institutions and on Italian (Mediterranean) style of legal life.
We then added the idea that an SLD born in an old Italian (Sicilian) town –as we see- should also contribute to the development of the territory where it belongs and to the wide-spread of the Mediterranean Style of Life (including Style of Legal Life).
The Mediterranean Lifestyle pattern is a case study for a sustainable lifestyle.
The Mediterranean lifestyle, proclaimed on November 10th , 2010 in Nairobi UNESCO, "intangible cultural heritage of humanity", is an ancient tradition of the Mediterranean. It has the best scientific evidence for being healthy, together with economic and socio-cultural benefits.
Mediterranean Style of Life is research, a way of doing. A major challenge is that it is not applied by the majority of the population in the Mediterranean region and overworld, and any solution must involve equity—the socially just allocation of resources.
The task of SLD is the implementation of Mediterranean Style of Life with multi-stakeholder involvement, with the knowledge that “a well fed nation is a healthy nation is a sustainable and productive nation”.
That is exactly how we created an original concept for the Scuola Legale Diffusa, establishing its roots in the Italian legal culture and especially in the culture of small, middle-size family law firms and other professional enterprises, so that it would be different from other types of legal services delivering that were popular then both in Italy and worldwide.
What is Scuola Legale Diffusa?
Scuola Legale Diffusa is a model including an original physical/structural point of view as well as a unique philosophy and authentic services to clients.
