I thank the Washington State Association for Justice for publishing my article on the value of Neurodiversity in the legal community. You can read it by clicking HERE. It's a followup to an article I wrote 20 years ago in which I compared my skill working product liability cases to the Seattle artist James Washington, Jr., who carved stone and who once said "If you love a thing, it will give up its secrets to you.
Washington worked mostly in stone, which he tapped and scraped until he found what he felt was always inside--usually something from nature that was also very spiritual.
I told my readers to return again and again to the documents and evidence of their cases until the case gave up its secrets. I told them to think like artists, intuitively. Now I realize I was teaching them to think like an autistic person.
Peter O’Neil is the author of My So-Called Disorder: Autism, Exploding Trucks, and the Big Daddy of Rock and Roll.
