# 256: Justice Matters
Story behind the Passage
There is one particular trait that characterizes some people: they are crazy about justice. Some of them become lawyers and this is where they have to learn that “being right and being granted justice” are two different things. Other people choose different professions but their obsession with justice does nto leave them. I am in the latter category but for a long time, I did not pay attention to this aspect. Still, it was part of my work; the longing to follow what is right and to uncover injustice. Today, everything has come together in the finding where exactly my approach creates most value.
On days like this one, so many things pop up again that were there before but did not make sense at the time. And law and people working in the field of law have kept coming back time and again. The most obvious relation was usually language and culture. Language — because people who studied law are usually very careful about crafting sentences, reading carefully and expressing themselves in a very concise manner. Culture — because they are usually very curious about finding out “the truth” and they have a very open-minded attitude. They like detecting problems. Of course, this depiction is more than stereotypical, still…
These similarities are also the ones that made me buy this book a while ago. Not that I seriously thought about studying law but at least, I was interested in how the study program is described. When I then opened the book today to find out if the author is mentioning something about compliance, I saw this page. And the catchword problem immediately caught my eyes because I love problems. I like finding them and I love solving them. But this is also why my heart aches so much when it comes to seeing people who are caught in a situation where they cannot do anything while being aware of the actual problem. This is what I can help fix. I just did not know how to call it before…
My Learnings
“Es geht bei Jura immer um Akteure, wie Du und ich es sind, die gegenüber ihren Mitmenschen oder dem Staat Rechte und Pflichten haben.“ / „Law is always about people like you and me who have rights and responsibilities concerning their fellow citizens and the state.“ This is the key — we are all equal before the law.” It does not take more than this insight, actually. This is also one major advantage of my work which I did not get together before. Now that I am seeing this frame of compliance as the context, it all makes perfect sense.
Whenever I enter an organization, I talk to each any everyone. I do not care if they are at the top of the hierarchy or at the bottom — they are equal for me because all are equal before the law. I speak to them on eye level, at least as best as any human being on earth can try to really act without ego. That is exactly why I love doing this. I feel like I am creating value because I am not only listening — I can help solve the issue because this is the explicit order I am executing. The aspect of problems comes in here exactly in the way that the header says it. I do not come in to cause trouble. I come in to detect the problem and help solve it. I am not there to make anything worse and my aim is not to scandalize stuff for some political reason. This is rewarding in a way that is hard to explain.
Maybe it is almost as rewarding as being a lawyer?
Maybe I will never know this. I just know that this was a breakthrough today which is hard to describe. After almost three years of iterating and experimenting, I feel like I have a name for the thing that had no name before. This is so cool, it is amazing. It will take more hard work and more trying and much talking and much frustration again. But I have this gut feeling that tells me I have arrived somewhere where the phase of being lost in the sense of successful but tiring experimentation has come to an end.
Now, it is all about doing it more often and with more impact than before.
Reflection Questions
1) Did you ever consider studying law? Why/not?
2) How do you react when you observe injustice experienced by others?
3) If you were a lawyer — which clients would you like to defend/work for?