The Lawyer's Humble Walk

Abstract

In reflecting on the inaugural conference for Pepperdine's Institute for Law, Religion and Ethics and the remarkable people gathered there, I was struck by the calm I had seen amongst these busy, accomplished attorneysa calm akin to the men and women gathered on the rim of the Canyon. Therein lies the root of my thesis here: The commonalities among lawyers of faith are born of humility, not acclaim.

My thesis is not a common one, because it is not putting us lawyers in an easy, popular or profitable place. My point, after all, is that lawyers of faith are not marked by being right while others are wrong, or by representing our clients more successfully, or by having the Lord favor us in our profession. Rather, I am saying that we will be known by our common humility, bom of a shared belief that there is a God, who is far greater than any one of us.

What follows comes in two parts. First, I will briefly examine the internal effect of a faith-based humility on a lawyer-that is, how we might look at ourselves. Second, and at more length, I will look at the external manifestations of this humility on lawyers-that is, how others might see us. In short, I see this humility as having four primary effects on the lawyer of faith. First, at the internal level, it leads to a constant questioning and a consistent uneasiness with the conflicting demands placed upon us by our faith and our vocation. In addition, there are at least three markers of faith which might be more visible to others: First, faith often enhances the emotional engagement of the lawyer with the human aspect of her work; second, acknowledgment that there is a God leads to a sense that there is right and wrong and steers us away from relativism; and third, this humility leads to a balanced perspective and a focus on lawyering as just one of many callings an individual may have.