This chapter begins with my attempt to articulate in general terms what seem to me those aspects of law practice that most embody its potential for personal fulfillment. They are not expressed in religious terms, although to some extent they could be. That apart, ask yourself whether they resonate with a list that you might make. To do that, you will need to call to mind a list of your own. That's the idea.

Following my essay, Timothy Floyd's thesis about the merit of a “virtues-based,” rather than a rules-based, approach to ethical questions will serve as a bridge from secular to religious modes of thinking about moral obligation in law practice. At the same time, it may aid your escape from the academic or doctrinal approach to the subject ordinarily taken in professional-responsibility courses.

Seth Kreimer and Joseph Allegretti then address the question of a lawyer's responsibilities in avowedly religious terms, out of their respective Jewish and Christian traditions. I encourage you to notice whether your finding resonance with their ideas depends on, or is independent of, the degree of your alignment with their specific religious tradition, or indeed with your response to religious ways of thinking more generally.