Recently, I've been struggling with a question that every lawyer or aspiring lawyer must at some point ask themselves. Some decided to go to law school because it seemed like the logical next step, some because they don't know what else to do, and others still because they want to mirror the charisma and power of the district attorney on Boston Legal. Some decide to become lawyers so they can buy the world, some decide to become lawyers so they can run the world, and some others decide to become lawyers so that they can save the world. The reality is that the majority of lawyers do none of these things. The reality is that a courtroom is often the last place the truth shows its face.
After a few weeks of the law school experience and staring down the real possibility of spending over a hundred grand to earn a Juris Doctorate, the question is a legitimate one, and at times, a frightening one. Already spending countless hours studying legal concepts, briefing cases, and writing legal memorandums that eventually seem to blur the passing of the day, I wonder...why do this for 3 years? Why put myself in social isolation, leave my family and friends with limited opportunities to visit them, and why spend more money than I can currently fathom on a graduate degree? The answer is actually much more simple than it seems, and begs another question. What is it that I pray for?
My real prayer, my honest prayer, most of time, is nothing. It is easy to forget to converse with God when one feels disconnected, or pressed for time, or possibly a multitude of other things. The answer, when it is at its best, it to be a good man, and to do good things for others, with honesty and integrity. That is the example I learned from my father, and from my mother, and from my true father in heaven. A lawyer has an unadulterated ability to do exactly those things. Whether or not most lawyers actually live up to that potential brings something else to mind:
The devil visited a lawyer's office and made him an offer. "I can arrange some things for you, " the devil said. "I'll increase your income five-fold. Your partners will love you; your clients will respect you; you'll have four months of vacation each year and live to be a hundred. All I require in return is that your wife's soul, your children's souls, and their children's souls rot in hell for eternity."
The lawyer thought for a moment. "What's the catch?" he asked.
What's the catch, the lawyer asks? So why would God call a man to be a lawyer? A profession that is riddled with distrust from the average person and rewards those within it for twisting the system or even twisting the truth? Because God calls us as Christians to be beacons of truth. If the courtroom is the last place where truth can be found, that is where we must bring it. Think about this, courtesy of the movie A Civil Action:
The odds of a plaintiff's lawyer winning in civil court are two to one against. Think about that for a second. Your odds of surviving a game of Russian roulette are better than winning a case at trial. 12 times better. So why does anyone do it? They don't. They settle. Out of the 780,000, only 12,000 or 11/2 percent ever reach a verdict...[t]rials are a corruption of the entire process and only fools who have something to prove end up ensnared in them. Now when I say prove, I don't mean about the case, I mean about themselves.
A week ago, I developed an enormous feeling of anxiety. My heartbeat felt unusually rapid, I developed a cold sweat, I asked someone to take my blood pressure, and I was scared that I was having a heart attack. For the first time in my life, I feared death. For a few hours I feared it as though it were staring at me face to face, testing me. I felt alone, I felt isolated, and eventually, I felt selfish for feeling all of those things. I prayed, albeit awkwardly and badly, but God knew what my heart felt, and He answered me today, in an opera He said:
Live still, I am life. Heaven is in your eyes. Is everything around you just the blood and mud? I am divine. I am oblivion. I am the God that comes down from the heavens, and makes of the Earth a heaven. I am love!
I am love
So the answer for me as to whether or not I made the right choice to be where I am has already been answered for me. God has great things in store for all those who love Him and for all those who pray sincerely to Him. If I know my place with God, I know my place in the world. What made me want to be a server of justice? Because the one image of justice that has forever been burned into my mind is the one of a man who drew a line in the sand and said to those who stood ready to strike down another, "May ye who have no sin cast the first stone." One by one, the stones dropped.
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