Many Houston business litigation attorneys know Ken Klee as a Los Angeles-based corporate reorganization and bankruptcy law expert, as well as a UCLA Law School professor. However, this LA Times article reports that Ken is also up to something completely different from representing parties in reorganizations or teaching students the intricacies of bankruptcy law:

Brentwood real estate broker Joan Gardner was suffering such excruciating pain with a swollen knee, months after a fall, that she was homebound, depressed and unable to work. Her doctor and orthopedic physical therapist encouraged her to have surgery, but Gardner declined because, “I’m stubborn and vain.” Instead, she decided to try something different.
Digging up a number her grocery clerk had given her, Gardner dialed Ken Klee, a UCLA law professor and prominent corporate bankruptcy lawyer who practices energy healing on the side. A seven-year student of more than half a dozen healing methods including reiki’s radiance technique, pranic healing and Theta Healing, Klee practices eight hours a week out of his Brentwood home office, stacked high with stones and crystals, massage table at the center.
Without touching her body or charging her a fee, Klee waved his hands over Gardner for three hours last December, channeling divine healing energy and helping her clear out anger and other blocks. The next day the swelling in Gardner’s knee was gone.
“I was in shock. It sounds probably crazy, but it’s the truth,” she said. “I feel like a million dollars, and I have since that day.”
Stories like Gardner’s raise eyebrows among those in the medical establishment and Klee’s academic colleagues. Once the provenance of faith healers, shamans, ancient and New Age mystics, however, energy healing is increasingly going mainstream.

And what on earth is energy healing?

Methods vary, but principles generally stem from ancient concepts of a life force ? called chi or qi in traditional Chinese medicine (prana in Indian medicine) ? that moves through pathways called meridians. Acupuncture, qigong, tai chi, yoga and shiatsu massage are all based on the idea that free-flowing energy throughout the body leads to optimal health.
Energy healers contend that people have an etheric, or energy, body, often called an aura, surrounding and penetrating the physical body, and energy fuel centers inside the body called chakras.
Because bodies are made up of subatomic particles in constant motion, many physical ailments manifest first in this energy body, like a blueprint, healers say. Stress and painful emotions, for instance, can cause energy to get stuck or depleted, inhibiting the body’s natural healing processes.
Healers claim to be able to detect and repair these problems with or without touching the body, sometimes from great distances. “All we are at our essence is vibration, and all disease is dissonance in vibration,” Klee says. “If we alter the vibration through crystals, color, sound, prayer or bringing energy through the hands, it all has to do with vibration.”
By harnessing the power of the mind-body connection, many energy healers say they are simply promoting the innate ability to heal oneself, meaning receptivity can affect whether it works, as can the intent and state of mind of the healer.
The line between energy healing and faith healing can get blurry. Some practitioners invoke a higher power, while others align cosmic healing symbols or gather and project healing energy from nature. Some tout extraordinary gifts; others say they are simply conduits, and anyone can learn to heal themselves and others with a little practice.

Altough the article notes that some clinical research into energy hearling is underway, the medical community retains a healthy dose of skepticism regarding the benefits of energy healing:

Stephen Barrett, a retired psychiatrist and founder of the health fraud guide Quackwatch, holds the “sheer quackery” point of view. He dismisses such research, saying, “There is nothing there.”
Barrett is coauthor of an article published in the Journal of the American Medical Assn. in 1998 debunking the effectiveness of Therapeutic Touch, an energy healing method often used by nurses.
“They claim they can, by concentrating, feel a person’s energy field and go through certain maneuvers to modify it and create a healing force,” he said. “We feel that’s preposterous. It’s a figment of their imagination.”
Barrett’s JAMA article publicized the results of a science fair project of a 9-year-old girl named Emily who tested Therapeutic Touch practitioners’ ability to detect her energy field. The experiment was similar to Schwartz’s, but the practitioners correctly guessed which of their hands the girl’s hand was hovering over only 44% of the time, less than chance would suggest.
Barrett, one of the nation’s most outspoken critics of alternative medicine, says energy healers and those who bolster them through studies are delusional or dishonest.

But Mr. Klee remains a true believer:

“If I can do it, anybody can do it. I’m a conservative guy, a lawyer, a skeptic. I believe in verifying things. Seven years ago, I would have thought this was completely nuts. Now I’m convinced science is going to validate this. It’s going to happen in my lifetime.”

Hat tip to Professor Bainbridge for the link to this story.