By James L. Nolan James L. Nolan is Executive Director of the Woodstock Business Conference at Woodstock
Theological Center, Georgetown University. B.A.1961, Yale; LLB 1964, UCLA School of
Law; MA Theo. 1996, Washington Theological Union. The text published here is a
revised version of a talk presented at the conference "Rediscovering the Role of
Religion in the Lives of Lawyers and Those They Represent," Fordham University School
of Law, December 8, 1998. Introduction The Lawyer's Calling(1) by Joseph G. Allegretti
begins with the bold assertion that: At its core the legal profession faces not so much a crisis of ethics, or
commercialization, or public relations, but a spiritual crisis. Lawyers and
their profession have lost their way.(2) Any profession in crisis affects its members and those they serve. Because
of the pivotal role that lawyers play in our society, a serious loss of meaning
for this professional group reverberates across all levels of the community,
public and private. The stakes are high. So it is important that civil law practitioners
be mature, authentic individuals able to confront and overcome this crisis in
meaning. For some lawyers, their religious faith serves as the motivation for
dedicated, intelligent, rational, and respectful practice in the law. Others
fail to see any connection between religious faith and the life of a lawyer.
After exploring the importance of the lawyer to society and some dimensions
of the crisis identified by Allegretti, this paper will suggest how one might
more effectively bridge the gap between religious faith and law practice to
better serve clients and society. The lawyer's talents and skills at the service of society Lawyers have special talents and skills. Some are seen as indispensable to
help straighten out a society hurtling though time without apparent compass
or purpose. Mary Ann Glendon, in her thought-provoking book A Nation Under
Lawyers(3), highlighted nine qualities,
talents, and skills that lawyers bring to society.(4) An attorney who loves goodness and seeks to do
what is right will recognize in this list familiar qualities that are quite
essential to the task at hand.
Lawyers these days have gained notoriety for using their skills in cut throat
litigation and the pursuit of wealth. Glendon's list of skills and qualities,
while seemingly commonplace, reflect a treasury of talent available for the
solution and avoidance of problems among individuals and groups of people, for
finding the peaceful resolution of disputes when they erupt, and for creating
the infrastructure to promote greater human prosperity. These are all skills
and talents needed for the good of society. In a similar vein, Timothy W. Floyd in his article The Practice of Law
as Vocation or Calling(13) claims that
the practice of law can be a character-building and virtue-building activity
for the benefit of society as well as the individual practitioner. He asserts,
"At its best lawyering does engender certain virtues and is itself sustained
by those virtues."(14) He names prudence,
temperance, fortitude, and justice as the lawyer's virtues. They sustain
and are sustained by the practice of law "when done well and done right."(15)
As to justice, he says: This is the fundamental lawyerly virtue. A professional should have some idea or
quality to profess. For our profession, that idea is preeminently justice. Ideally, the
practice of law fosters and encourages justice. Conversely, the practice of law cannot
long sustain itself if lawyers do not possess a thirst for justice.(16) For Floyd, society can realize the justice it craves through virtuous lawyers doing
their jobs well. "And that job is representing clients. Lawyers help clients in the
prevention and resolution of disputes. That is done most often through wise counseling,
and through effective advocacy when necessary."(17)
It is this context reflecting the necessary and crucially serious roles lawyers play in
society that the claimed loss of the lawyer's professional bearings takes on greater
concern. The lawyer's loss of meaning Allegretti explores this crisis, its causes and manifestations in some detail. He
identifies one cause as the gap between religious belief and the exigencies of daily work.
He claims that lawyers might bridge this gap by affirming that the practice of law is,
indeed, a vocation. He calls for lawyers to become healers in society and maintain a
posture of service to clients with what he describes as a covenant relationship.(18) The disconnect Allegretti(19)
and others(20) document between one's religious faith and
the experience in the workplace is hardly unique to the legal profession. Many people, in
all walks of life, have been forced to conclude that a picture of the universe loved into
being by God seems naive in the face of the harsh realities of the world of work. Research
in this area (21) buttresses Allegretti's conclusions.
People compartmentalize, seal off work life from family and religious concerns. However
the research also suggests that acceptance of a world where faith and work are divorced
and compartmentalized, does not come without cost. In fact, it runs counter to our deepest
yearnings.(22) People are hungry to figure out how to
relate faith and work. They search for meaning and a way to bring their "deeper
self" to decision making and action. Lawyers may find that they are particularly tested by the
prevailing state of affairs. They encounter the daily struggles between the realities of
law practice and the noble aspirations and desires that prompted and reinforce one's
choice of law as a profession. Lawyers on occasion sense the weighty responsibilities
assigned to the law by society. It is by and through the law that deals are done,
transactions occur, that the community is ordered, that rights are asserted and wrongs
redressed, that liberties are preserved. The law, as much as anything else, is the prism
through which society sees and accounts for unfolding events. Society looks to the law for
answers to the issues of the day and to lawyers to design and implement corrective
measures. With the struggles arising from their practice, lawyers sometimes experience a
debasement of noble desires, see a deprecation of the ideal of service, and the
substitution of expediency for excellence. A lawyer whose life is informed by religious
faith may, by reason of that fact, find the current situation even more difficult. That
need not be. Society will be better served with faithful religious lawyers in civil
practice. A religious lawyer. What is a "religious lawyer?" The organizers of
the conference that prompted this essay(23) speak of a
"religious lawyers movement."(24) Who are they
talking about? I find Howard Lesnick's discussion of the term most helpful.(25) His comprehensive understanding emphasizes three
constituent qualities: obligation, integration, and transcendence. Often in the
contemporary view of things, "religious" is taken to mean something dogmatic,
oppressive, restricting, or worse, an excuse justifying inhumane, bloodthirsty behavior,
imperialism, and genocide. I mean nothing of the sort. For this paper, a religious lawyer
is a man or woman whose view of life and all of its manifestations is informed and
nurtured by an understanding that contemplates the transcendent reality. The religious
lawyer sees life as a stirring adventure, with elements of risk and hazard, yet grounded
in a sense of security based upon transcendental benevolence. The religious lawyer seeks
integration and consciously responds to an allurement that beckons beyond one's self to be
the best that one can be. Building on Allegretti's work, I maintain that the
religious lawyer can and must persevere for the good of society. I suggest some ways that
might serve to help, based upon an effective process that was developed in work with
business executives who have joined to assist each other to integrate faith, family, and
profession. The religious lawyer's horizon All adults have a horizon, a world view, a Weltanschauung,
an all-encompassing framework within which all their knowing occurs, all their work is
done, and all decisions are made. At any particular point in time, this world view is the
product of an individual's social, cultural, and family background, of one's education,
training and experience, and of the decisions and choices over the years.(26)
While one's horizon can and does change over time, at a given moment it sets the limit to
what a person can know and what he or she cares about. What lies beyond one's horizon is simply outside the range
of one's knowledge and interests: one neither knows nor cares. But what lies within one's
horizon is in some measure, great or small, an object of interest and of knowledge.(27) Lawyers of whatever stripe share certain similarities in
horizon due to a common educational background. Lawyers gain certain intellectual and
moral habits over the years from, among other things, the training and experiences that
are specific to the profession. Lawyers are trained to think. Some fault this training as
too technical, as purged of humane values, too limited and constricting.(28)
Others value the discipline of systematic rational thought in a time where logic, reason,
and concerns of the intellect seem to have taken a backseat to mindless emotionalism or
post-modern nihilism.(29) For most lawyers it all begins with learning "to
think like a lawyer": acquiring the lawyer's skills in identifying the relevant
issues, discerning key facts, and locating and employing precedent and governing
authority. A lawyer's ability to render sound advice and to advocate effectively and
persuasively builds on these skills. Over time, one develops the ability to analyze and
decide what is so and to address what needs to be done. The lawyer comes to master the
craft of the law and grows in appreciation for the art of negotiating and documenting
transactions, drafting briefs, writing opinions, preparing and trying cases, advising and
counseling clients, and mediating disputes. I do not contend that a religious lawyer is necessarily
any more skillful, more energetic, or more effective an advocate or counselor. A religious
lawyer, one whose religious faith illumines his life, comes with a horizon that includes
all these "professional" interests to which is added concern about the ultimate
purpose of life, love of God, and love of neighbor. Religious faith sustains each of these
interests and concerns. A religious horizon grasps the deepest drive within us that
directs us to our choices and decisions, the drive that moves us to action. What exactly is this added dimension for the religious
lawyer? Whole traditions, theologies, and religious movements have dealt with this
question through out the ages. Concern about the ultimate purpose in life is fascinating,
relevant, and sometimes frightening. This has been true over all of human history. Our
religious traditions have not failed inquirers. The prophet Micah, for one, gives a rather
pithy answer: You have been told, Oh man, what is good, and what the
Lord requires of you: only to do the right and to love goodness, and to walk humbly with
your God?(30) A provocative exchange between a lawyer and Jesus in
Luke's gospel adds substance to Micah's general advice. Lawyers are rarely sympathetic
characters in the New Testament. More often than not they are shown posing crafty
questions, trying to trap Jesus in one way or another. One famous exchange begins with a
lawyer standing up, it says, to test Jesus: "Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal
life?" Jesus said to him, "What is written in the law? How do you read
there?" He said in reply, "You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your
heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind, and
your neighbor as yourself." (31) He replied to him,
"You have answered correctly; do this and you will live." (32) The story continues with the lawyer pursuing the
interrogation demanding a definition for the term "neighbor."(33)
In response, Jesus told the parable of the Good Samaritan and asked the lawyer to judge
which of the three passersby was a neighbor to the robbery victim.(34)
The lawyer answered, "The one who treated him with mercy."(35)
The horizon of a religious person informed by these and similar teachings will be
concerned with the love of God and neighbor, with doing what is right, with loving
goodness, and with walking humbly with God. A religious lawyer will have hope and
confidence that giving attention to such things is not only worthwhile and necessary but
made possible because of God's love poured into our hearts.(36)
A religious lawyer's horizon includes concern for promoting God's plan for the world. In
other words, such a person will want to practice law with God as the ultimate client. The concrete experience of day-to-day practice. We rarely quarrel with lofty ideals. Implementation is, as
ever, more difficult. Implementation in the context of the particular, the day-to-day work
in the law, brings us face-to-face with concrete occasions for doing the right and loving
goodness. Sometimes it is not so clear. We find ourselves in ambiguity, in the "grey
area." It is in the concrete, where we live and work, that we either succeed in doing
what is truly good or fall short of the mark. We know the concrete from our own experience
as tax experts, litigators, business lawyers, administrative and regulatory specialists,
labor law experts, and family lawyers. Anyone who has practiced for a period of time knows
firsthand the joys and shortcomings of the law. In search of experiences beyond my own, I
conducted an informal "survey" of colleagues and friends, somewhat less than a
fully scientific effort. All respondents were engaged in major firm corporate practice at
large law firms. They were young and old, male and female. They were asked two questions: a. What are five satisfying, exciting, wonderful things
you can say about your practice. Some positive attributes about law practice included: 1. Intellectual stimulation. The ability to think about
challenging issues and to solve problems. They enjoyed the encounter with exciting new
cases, events, situations, and personalities. 2. Working with others who were smart, able, effective
professionals. "For the most part it is a great crowd." 3. Being able to help people. "People come to me with
problems that can be addressed and in many cases I can help. That is thrilling when I look
back on it." 4. The excitement of competition. 5. Financial comfort. 6. Respect. One woman reported that her practice gave her
a degree of immediate acceptance, legitimacy, and respect that would be more difficult to
find in any other calling. The negative responses were fairly consistent: 1. "Family pressure." Respondents saw pressures
being imposed upon them by their profession that hurt their family life and jeopardized
their loves and responsibilities outside of the job. This negative was most tellingly
illustrated by the concern a brilliant senior associate expressed as fear that starting a
family might derail her promising career. 2. Time pressure. "Making life fit in between
professional performances." Respondents spoke of the tyranny of billable hours and
compensation systems that can affect and sometimes skew judgement. 3. The devaluing of honesty and integrity in the
profession. A frequent complaint was that, "People no longer play fair; they
overstate, they lie, they back off of agreements, they negotiate in bad faith. What is
most frustrating is that they seem to get away with it." 4. Moral deviance. This conflict was illustrated by
situations where the position the lawyer was required to assert for the client was legally
correct but inequitable and morally indefensible. "Sometimes I have to take positions
I do not believe in." 5. Litigation centers around conflict. Almost universally,
the respondents, including litigators, complained about the harm caused by the litigation
system. Someone always walks away the loser and, all too often, both parties to a conflict
end up losing. Litigation is seen as destructive of the parties, the system, and even the
advocates, while at the same time it is highly remunerative for the lawyers and the firm. If this informal survey(37)
is any gauge, a lawyer in civil practice will conclude that the practice of law can be
wonderfully thrilling and rewarding but that it comes at a price. The profession offers
lawyers ample opportunity to fall short of their ultimate goals in life. Lawyers are free,
and sometimes encouraged, to choose something other than goodness. In light of the
pressures, costs, and compromises seen in concrete experience, how is a religious lawyer,
someone who loves goodness and seeks to do the right thing, to persevere and thrive? What is a religious lawyer to do? I speak from a Christian perspective, but I do not believe
that what I propose is really very different from what other faith perspectives suggest.
It is important for a religious lawyer to remain an active participant and engage in civil
practice today. The term engagement describes an attitude, a commitment, as well as the
activities of a lawyer representing clients. The religious lawyer might find doing the
right and loving goodness be easier with community and a discipline of prayer. Engagement. The good
that lawyers can do for individuals and for society is far too important to ignore. All
are called to collaborate in God's creative and redemptive work, called to use our skills
and talents for the greater good.(38) The implication of
that call for a religious lawyer is neither to withdraw from society nor to construct
compartments to wall off concerns generated by religious sensibilities.(39)
Seeing one's profession as a vocation is one way to assume the attitude, disposition, and
commitment necessary to answer the call. The task at hand is to bring one's whole self
(mind, heart, and soul) to each day's challenges and opportunities for the service of the
client's needs and the systems that promote justice and order in society.(40)
Society's overall investment in the procedures and institutions of the law as well as in
the skills and talents of its professionals is far too great to suggest any course for a
religious lawyer other than engagement. Community. In our very
secular culture being a person who can acknowledge to self and others that religious faith
informs one's life can be quite lonely. A lawyer seeking more than the skillful
compartmentalization or suppression of religious sensibilities requires a community of
support and encouragement. Our faith communities -- going back in time, embedded in the
present, and facing the future -- can help to channel and encourage our desire to do what
is right and love of goodness. There is evil and sin in the world. We sin, fall short.
There are systems and structures in our society that promote evil as well as those that
support goodness and justice. Alone, we can overlook the absurdity of evil and sin. Alone,
we lack the power to confront the structures or systems that encourage evil. Within a
faith community one is spurred to recognize what one might otherwise overlook and to
question what would otherwise remain buried in ignorance. We can find support and
encouragement with others in the pursuit of goodness. In collaboration we can design and
implement practices and systems that foster justice and free people to do what is right. Prayer. We are not
alone. In fact, we are loved by God into being and empowered in life by God's grace. By
prayer we keep our communication lines with God open and supple. While no particular form
or method can be said to be tailored for the lawyer, a lawyer's training and verbal bent
might make praying with the Psalms a particularly compatible communication pathway.(41) Moreover, we need to probe our own religious traditions
to better know God, God's works, and God's will for us. Our religious traditions recognize
that study can be a very positive form of prayer. The same diligence and energy spent in
learning the facts and the law relevant to a particular matter can, when focused on the
history, practices, and grounding of one's religious tradition, produce rare, enriching
fruit. A process that fosters prayer and community. The Woodstock Business Conference(42)
set out to help business leaders of faith find the necessary language and encouragement to
create and maintain business cultures that were consistent with Judeo-Christian values. To
do this it initiated a national network of business executives who meet in local chapters
to offer each other a kind of peer ministry in support of the mission. Over the course of
six years, a meeting process developed. As amplified and refined, this process has been
credited with the success the Conference has enjoyed. This process embodies a manner
of proceeding that is perfectly attuned to the lawyer's way. The real issues arising from
the concrete experience of group members are surfaced and addressed in a manner that
produces small steps and incremental changes that, over time, make a significant
difference for goodness and reinforcing the right. The process(43) as
practiced by Woodstock groups, now in fourteen cities, takes place in monthly meetings
that run about one and a half hours. The meetings are held at the same time and place each
month and aim to begin and end on time so that busy executives can count on and set aside
the time on their calendars. The meeting format includes certain elements, such as:
introductions, opening prayer, a reminder of the mission of the group, Scripture reading
followed by a period of silence and a sharing of insights on the passage, discussion of
the topic for the meeting led by one of the group, reflection and evaluation of the
meeting, and closing prayer. Woodstock Business Conference members affirm that they
have grown morally and ethically. They say that they can better see the good and evil in
their work lives and elsewhere. They sense that they are empowered to choose and act more
responsibly. They call the WBC chapter meetings their examination of conscience or a
"monthly moral checkup." They report that they become "better spiritual
leaders back at work."(44) They speak of new
insights, sharpened perceptions, and fresh frameworks for understanding the problems they
confront. They find the necessary encouragement to take innovative and effective action
and to initiate needed change.(45) Conclusion A religious lawyer, one who carries a sense of obligation,
a desire for integration, and a drive for the transcendent is called by his or her
religious tradition and community to a way of being -- living and professing the same
values and behaviors at home as well as in the office or the courthouse.(46)
Our religious traditions challenge our notions and behaviors by promoting prayerful
reflection and disciplined lives. A religious horizon empowers us to recognize important
questions as our actions affect the lives of those we encounter and the profession itself.
We must engage in the practice of law intelligently, reasonably, responsibly, and
lovingly. Alone, it is hard do this well. We are sustained when we are conscious of our
relationship with our God and our neighbor. 1. Joseph G. Allegretti, The Lawyer's Calling: Christian Faith and
Legal Practice, Paulist Press, Mahwah, New Jersey, (1996) (hereinafter "The
Lawyer's Calling"). 2. The Lawyer's Calling, at 3. 3. Mary Ann Glendon, A Nation Under Lawyers: How the Crisis in the
Legal Profession Is Transforming American Society (Harvard University Press, Cambridge,
MA, 1994). 4. Id. at 102-107. 5. Id. at 102. 6. Id. at 103 7. Id. at 103-4. 8. Id. at 104. 9. Id. at 104-5. 10. Id. at 106. 11. Id. at 106. 12. Id. at 107. 13. 66 Fordham L.R. 1405 (1998). 14. Id. at 1421. 15. Id. 16. Id. at 1422. 17. Id. 18. Id. at 37-50. See also, Joseph G. Allegretti, Lawyers,
Clients, and Covenant: A Religious Perspective on Legal Practice and Ethics, 66
Fordham L.R. 1101, 1110-1129 (1998). 19. The Lawyer's Calling. at 1-3. 20. Benjamin Sells, The Soul of the Law (Element, Rockport,
MA,1994) at 99-100,189. Glendon, supra note 5, at 85-100. 21. Robert Wuthnow, God and Mammon in America (Free Press, New York,1994)at 40,128-130 and Robert
Jackall, Moral Mazes: The World of Corporate Managers
(Oxford, New York,1988) at 6,51. 22. Wuthnow, at 55. 23. See, supra note 1. 24. Russell G. Pearce, The Religious Lawyering Movement: An
Emerging Force in Legal Ethics and Professionalism, 66 Fordham L.R. 1075-1082 (1998).
25. Howard Lesnick addresses what it means to be a religious lawyer
in his article The Religious Lawyer in a Pluralist Society, 66 Fordham L.R. 1469.
There, he describes these three constituent qualities. Id. at 1473-91. He argues
that the more authentic notion of religious obligation is one that transcends mere
obedience to external command or the demands of human reason. The more authentic sense is
closer to one's heartfelt response to the invitation or "the ought that beckons"
that arises from a mature appreciation of God's love for us. Id. at 1477-78. 26. Bernard Lonergan, The Future of Christianity, in
William F. J. Ryan, S.J., and Bernard J. Tyrell, S.J., eds. A Second Collection: Papers by
Bernard J. Lonergan, S.J. (University of Toronto Press, Toronto, 1996) at 162. 27. Bernard Lonergan, Method in Theology, (University of Toronto
Press, Toronto 1990) at 236. 28. Sells, see note 22 supra, at 47-50,180-1. 29. See Glendon's account of the soundness of the development of
the common law based upon a profoundly sophisticated understanding of human knowing in A
Nation Under Lawyers, see note 7 supra, at 230-253. 30. Micah 6:8 (All citations to the Bible refer to the New American
Bible.) 31. See, Dt 6:5 and Lv 19:18. 32. Luke 10:25-28. 33. Luke 10:29. 34. Luke 10:30-36. 35. Luke 10:37. 36. Rom. 5:5. 37. The reader may find it instructive to explore these questions
with reference to his or her own practice. Take a few minutes to list five exhilarating,
life-giving qualities you find in the practice and five negative, deadening, or troubling
things. Are the results similar to those noted? Do they raise new questions, point to new
directions? 38. This may seem self-evident, but the religious traditions
have highlighted this fact in recent years. For example, Pope John Paul II frequently
writes and speaks of collaboration with God. His observations to managers and
professionals in Durango, Mexico are fairly typical of much of what he has said
over the years: We must contemplate human activity in the light of the
collaboration with God that every human being is called to offer. Our world today ... must
also become an echo of this divine design and collaborate with the Creator in the
transformation of the world according to God's plan. (John Paul II, address on May 9, 1990 to members of the
business community in Durango, Mexico, collected in Robert G. Kennedy, Dignity of
Work: John Paul II Speaks to Managers and Workers, University Press of America,
Lanhan, MD, 1994 at 65.) Kennedy defines John Paul II's frequent use of the term
"Collaboration with God" to convey the notion that: Human work expresses a sharing in the divine work of creation. By putting
to use the wealth of spiritual and material resources given them by the Creator,
human persons contribute to the progress of society and their own sanctification.
Id. at 355. 39. Allegretti, The Lawyer's Calling at 13,16. 40. William L. Droel, The Spirituality of Work: Lawyers (ACTA
Publications, Chicago, 1989) at 15. 41. For a useful collection of the Psalms edited by William J.
Byron, S.J., for use in times of business and professional challenge, see William J.
Byron, ed.,Take Courage: Psalms for Support and Encouragement (Sheed & Ward, Kansas
City, 1995). 42. See, Woodstock Business Conference homepage:
http://woodstock.georgetown.edu/index.htm 43. See, Formation
Book, Woodstock Business Conference, Woodstock Theological Center, Washington, D.C.
1998 at 7-18. 44. Id. at 19. 45. Id. at 20. 46. Mary Ann Dantuono, A Citizen Lawyer's Moral, Religious, and
Professional Responsibility for the Administration of Justice for the Poor, 66
Fordham L.R. 1383, 1384 (1998).
Urban Law Journal (Fordham University), May 1999
b. What five things do you find troubling or discouraging about your practice.
Endnotes
See also: