About Our Symbol
The Integrative Law Elephant
Our elephant is more than a mascot. It represents the idea at the heart of Integrative Law: many different perspectives and approaches can be part of one larger whole.
The Elephant and the Blind Men
Our mascot is a stuffed elephant, hand-made by an artist friend, sewn from patches that each look like something else: brown wood-grained legs, a brick-wall back, a braided-rope tail, fan-shaped ears, spear-like tusks, and a snake-like trunk. It is a creative depiction of the ancient story of the blind men and the elephant, in which each man touches a different part of the animal and insists that his own limited experience describes the whole.
A richer understanding emerges when we see the whole.
The Whole Elephant
When Kim Wright is asked to explain Integrative Law, she usually starts with this story. Each practice area in this movement — restorative justice, collaborative law, therapeutic jurisprudence, comic contracts, and all the rest — is like one part of the elephant. People who know only their own corner of the movement are sure they understand the whole animal. Some sense there are other parts they haven’t met. A few have a feel for the whole elephant without being able to name each piece.
The Integration of the Pieces
Integrative Law is the recognition that all these parts belong to one animal — that the movement is the integration of the pieces, not any single piece alone. The elephant itself is also a widely used symbol of strength, social bonds, wisdom, dignity, patience, commitment, peace, and collective consciousness, which is part of why it felt like the right mascot for this work.