Tuesday, April 19, 2011
"Catholics and the Practice of Law"
My former student, Matt Emerson, has another essay up at Patheos, called "Catholics and the Practice of Law." In it, he responds to a recent New York Times story which asks whether law school is a losing game. He concludes with this:
. . . I am not suggesting that Catholics should not be lawyers, nor am I suggesting that all lawyers are equally affected by the factors I've outlined above. However, a Catholic must be uncommonly mindful of what draws him or her to the practice of law. If one does attend law school and enter the practice, he or she must act intentionally, every day, to strengthen his or her relationship with God. Sunday Mass is not enough. The compulsion to bill hours and its effect on how an associate views life can turn faith into mere ritual or into an impersonal duty that involves no more than writing checks, temptations against which a faithful Catholic must vigilantly safeguard.
https://mirrorofjustice.blogs.com/mirrorofjustice/2011/04/catholics-and-the-practice-of-law.html
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The essay touches slightly on an interesting subject that I have never seen addressed in writing: the spiritual environment of big law firms. I practiced at a large, well known national firm for 8 years (staring in the late 1980s and into the 1990s) and "reverted" to Catholicism after I left. I have often wondered if my reversion would have occurred had I stayed. There was something about the atmosphere there that, in retrospect, seems to me to be deeply unconducive to a spiritual life. The situation is probably even worse these days now that "LGBT" ideology rules the roost at most (all?) big law firms.