To better handle the stress that comes along with the battles of being a litigator, Jeffrey Bunn often spends 15 minutes silently meditating before a confrontational call or courtroom hearing.

Bunn considers it part of his practice of mindfulness, which for him is the mental equivalent of physical exercise. But his request to turn an interior office at Chicago’s 18-lawyer Latimer LeVay Fyock into a low-lit room for meditation fell upon deaf ears among his partners.