Acting as a prosecuting attorney, third-year law student Rachael Mailman questions a witness while fellow student Joe Murphy reads a document during a mock trial last month at Roger Williams University School of Law in Bristol.

The Providence Journal Ruben W. Perez

Lawyers often take a front-row seat to the dark side of society. They see divorces, crime, families divided over estates. It can make for a taxing life that leads to stress, substance abuse and cynicism.

And with almost 5,600 lawyers belonging to the Rhode Island Bar Association, that can make for a lot of misery.

With that in mind, David M. Zlotnick has crafted a class at Roger Williams University School of Law that incorporates the practice of being mindful, or fully aware, into trial work. He is trying to teach the students to connect with their own minds and hearts so they can better connect with future clients and witnesses.

“I want them to be able to be trial lawyers in a way where they are more compassionate to themselves and others,” says Zlotnick, the law school’s associate dean of academic affairs.

One of the few such classes in the country, the first-ever course at Roger Williams is being paid for through a $10,000 grant from the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society, in Northampton, Mass. Its coursework draws on meditative practices that are part of all the major religions and spiritual traditions and are intended to help people achieve greater balance, calm and empathy. At the same time, it could cultivate better courtroom skills.

Lawyers, he says, have a tendency to be so focused on extracting particular details from witnesses that they are not truly listening to what a person says on the stand. They can view the questioning process as confrontational and people as objects, instead of individuals with stories and history.

Zlotnick has brought in actors and a lawyer-turned-yoga instructor to guide students through meditation and relaxation techniques. He has relied on the teachings of Buddhism and other religions and on literature as well as visualization exercises.

One student led a recorded visualization April 23, two days before the class would do a mock trial before real-life judges as their final exam. The audiotape instructed the 20 or so students to imagine an aspect of their lives in which they hoped to find success, professionally or personally. The speaker urged the students to picture themselves achieving in this area and to return to that image again and again. Negative thoughts should be allowed to simply pass through the mind.

Zlotnick’s manner gives the students — many of whom chose to take the class to overcome a fear of public speaking — room to make mistakes. “Try to do some things well and forgive yourself for doing some things wrong,” he says. “I did things wrong and still won.”

An intense, wiry man who keeps Buddhist quotations taped to his door, Zlotnick began practicing yoga and meditation about 10 years ago. He credits it with improving his life and laments that he didn’t find it earlier. Perhaps, he says, then he could have put in more than the 4½ years he served as a federal prosecutor in Washington, D.C.

“The law doesn’t promote healthy habits,” he says. “Part of this is to promote lawyers being happier” and avoiding burnout.

The students seemed to eat it up. Rachael Mailman, a self-described yoga fanatic, took the class to get more accustomed to doing trial work. Each class starts, she says, with a meditation that clears the mind and eases workload. “The energy in the room changes,” she says.

Zlotnick, she says, is tough, but pushes students to reach outside their comfort zones in an environment that feels safe.

Mailman, of Austin, Texas, hopes it will give her techniques she can use to calm anxiety and better deal with the chaos of daily law practice when she becomes a criminal-defense lawyer.

But Zlotnick wants to shape lawyers’ attitudes toward each other as much as witnesses. Remember, he says, “the attorney you’re arguing against today could push you out from in front of a bus tomorrow.”

kmulvane@projo.com