Vision, Community, and Study

Continuing the discussion I started yesterday about the ABA Journal interview with Michael Melcher, author of The Creative Lawyer: A Practical Guide to Authentic Professional Satisfaction (ABA 2007), I want to make a quick comment on a second question posed to him:

"What can young lawyers specifically do to assure a fulfilling long-term career?"

Leave aside for a second that the question is a bit over the top, and that he should have said, "Nobody can assure a fulfilling career, that's just crazy talk." But he gave a very good answer:

1. Develop a long-term, compelling vision. [snip]
2. Develop robust personal relationships both within law and outside of it, and put in the time to maintain them. [snip]
3. Create a professional learning strategy. [snip]

Vision, community, and learning. I like it!

For the Christian lawyer, this means thinking Christianly about what it means to be a lawyer, and developing a theology of one's law practice. Secondly, it involves living out the lawyer's life within a diverse and robust community, including those that teach and challenge you, those that encourage and nurture you, and those whom you serve in short and long term commitments. Finally, it means a commitment to study the Scriptures and other resources with an eye toward learning from others (both in generation and those in the past) about what a faithful life in the law is all about.

Again, I haven't read Melcher's book, but I like the general direction in which he points.

Career Satisfaction

My American Bar Association electronic newsletter came today, and it linked me to an interesting interview with Michael Melcher, author of The Creative Lawyer: A Practical Guide to Authentic Professional Satisfaction (ABA 2007). I have not read the book, but the interview is very interesting. It touches on a number of themes I see as crucial for the Christian lawyer to address.

Read the interview. Here are my thoughts on the first question: "What unique challenges do lawyers face in finding satisfaction in their careers?"

This is an important question, given the immense dissatisfaction in the profession. His answer is basically four-fold:

1. When lawyers apply their learned and naturally detachment and skepticism to career development, they quash creative solutions;
2. Lawyers fail to develop an identity apart from their work;
3. Lawyers fail to "network" with those outside the profession; and
4. There is "a certain amount of negativity" in the profession.

I think the last one is a bit general, but he is certainly onto something with the "skepticism and detachment" that is bred in law school-- if we don't carefully guard and manage it, it oozes into all that we do, even outside the law. Former Cornell Law dean Roger Cramton argued thirty years ago that this thoroughgoing skepticism is part of the Ordinary Religion of the Law School Classroom, and that its consequences for the profession were severe.

As I point out in Redeeming Law, the question of the lawyer's identity is also a key issue in developing one's calling to the glory of God. Melcher is correct that lawyers often "lack a deep sense of who they are apart from their jobs."

I think this is part of the fragmentation that we see everywhere. Neither family, faith, nor community is relevant to who I am as a lawyer. Therefore, young lawyers who have poured their souls into law school, at the expense of developing a "whole" self, are defined by their work. I would add that this fragmentation and isolation is encouraged by law school, by professional training, and by the modern world that disengages the sacred from the secular, facts from values, and religion from work.

Melcher's third point also rings true from a Christian perspective: Lawyers, like everyone else, are only alive as particular parts in a larger body. Without ministry to and from others in and outside the body of Christ, lawyers are not participants in the vibrant ministry of the body. A fulfilled law practice is one that takes part in a diversity of service within the diverse depths of a community.

Lawyers Who Love Their Jobs?

In a pre-law seminar I've been teaching, we've discussed the undeniable fact that a large number of attorneys regret having ever gone to law school (one in four is a good round number-- from an ABA survey of the 1990s).

The good news is that many lawyers do enjoy their work and find it fulfilling. Have a look at this interesting article from the London Times online discussing lawyers who love their work. This topic is one worth exploring. Why are some lawyers dying to get out of the profession and others are thriving?

HT: ABA Journal

More: From earlier in the week, this article (also from the Times "student law" section) encouraging students to think creatively to find law jobs that will "improve the world."

Instrumentalism and American Law

So far, most of the questions that readers have asked about the substance of Redeeming Law focus on the topic of instrumentalism. Law is, in fact, instrumental, they say—it is a social tool, and it is used to deter, encourage, and engineer behavior. That’s a fact, is it not? If so, why do I villify legal instrumentalism in the book and, in fact, blame it for the loss of the moral center in the legal academy (see pp. 32-33, e.g.)?

It is true, of course, that law is a tool for shaping behavior. So it is instrumental. Yet it is not primarily or essentially a tool to be used on people, behaviors, or institutions. Even though law can be a tool and we often treat it as tool, its essence, its nature, its first order purpose is not as a tool to be wielded. (Note here the passive voice, which points out a secondary problem: who is the righful wielder of the tool and who decides what end is to be sought?)

The late Harold Berman put it this way:

It is widely accepted in our law schools that law is essentially something that is made by political authorities, including legislators, judges, and administrators, to effectuate their policies; that law is essentially a means of social engineering; that law is essentially a pragmatic device, an instrument, used by those in power to accomplish their will. Of course, law is all that. But it is not solely that-- it is not essentially that. What is omitted from the prevailing view is a belief that law is rooted in something bigger than the people who hand it down -- that law is rooted in history and in the moral order of the universe.

HAROLD J. BERMAN, The Crisis of Legal Education in America, in FAITH AND ORDER: THE RECONCILIATION OF LAW AND RELIGION 333-34 (Scholars Press 1993) (cited in REDEEMING LAW, p. 24).

In short, the question is whether the essence, the nature, the primary purpose of law is instrumental: that is, something created by those in power to accomplish particular ends. The answer is no: it is not primarily, essentially, naturally a mere tool. When law is reduced to a pragmatic human artifact, it loses its very nature as something rooted, as Berman says, in the moral order of the universe.

Redeeming Law and InterVarsity

Over at the InterVarsity Christian Fellowship website, my friend and colleague John Terrill has posted a very nice review of Redeeming Law. JT directs InterVarsity's Professional Schools Ministry.

Welcome to Redeeming Law

I've created this blog hoping to discuss issues related to the lawyer's work from a Christian persective. Over the years, I've heard all sorts of questions from Christian students thinking about law school:

Can a Christian really be a lawyer? What challenges does a Christ-follower face in the practice of law? How can I serve Christ as a lawyer? Wouldn't it be better to do something else?

With the publication of Redeeeming Law: Christian Calling and the Legal Profession (InterVarsity 2007), I provided my two-cents' worth on the challenges facing the profession and a few feeble suggestions for solutions. But a book-- even an overly long one-- cannot fully address the issues.

I'd like to continue the discussion of what it means to be "called" to the law.