Vocations: I Love Being an Attorney

Spent the morning giving my prayer and financial talks to a Pre-Cana class at the Church of the Madalene. I really love what I do. Deo gratias.

When I was in my twenties and in college, I did a stint with U.S. Senator Don Nickle's (R-Oklahoma) office in Tulsa for a brief semester. It was an unpaid internship, and they set me to work answering phones as sort of an "ombudsman" position. (For the uninitiated, that means they gave me the work no one else in the office wanted to do.)

Fascinating variety, let me tell you. I took calls from people irate about their trash pickup (not usually something a U.S. Senator deals with) to people calling about problems dealing with their son in the military, and the usual Social Security payments, and alien abductions thrown in for good measure, and even including calls from the local Peruvian ambassador (Tulsa has an embassy, in case you didn't know.) Boring, it was not.

I remember thinking at the time, "Boy - if I were independently wealthy, this is EXACTLY what I'd like to do!" And I meant that with all sincerity. It was wonderful work and the joy of helping people (crazy or not) was such a boon. I loved every minute of it. Really.

Today, of course, I don't work for the senator. But I do work for people facing problems. I'm an attorney - a bankruptcy and consumer law attorney. People come to me with seemingly intractable problems, and I help them.

This one is facing foreclosure and thinks they might lose their home. This one is recently laid-off, and has no savings to fall back on. Those over there are about to be sued by their creditors, and don't know what to do.

All of these people come to me. And I help them. Much of the time that simply means helping them understand what they're facing and what they can do about it. What the worst-case scenario is, and why chances are it won't happen -- but that if it does, I will be there to defend them.

God in heaven, thank you. I love my job. Please let me continue to serve You by serving them.

I don't work for a U.S. Senator, and I can't boss around lackeys at the Library of Congress, but I *DO* get to help people.

Deo gratias, indeed.

Law, life and other miscellany

I've been considering a change lately.

Last week marked my sixth year with the small but somewhat pretentious law firm that I've labored in since my abortive attempt at soloing.

I'm looking to make a change for a variety of reasons, but in short, they would center around a desire to have more control over my practice and a desire to support my family by making more money in the process.

I've long represented indigent clients -- mostly in the field of consumer bankruptcy, but other debtor-creditor matters including foreclosure and indebtedness defense as well. I like the work; it appeals to my desire to make a difference and be Christ to those I meet.

Which brings up my Catholicism and the particular expression of it that my life has followed.

Last summer I became a postulant with a third order Franciscan group known (then) as the Tertiary Franciscans of the Primitive Observance -- a third order closely associated with the Franciscans of the Primitive Observance (or TFPO and FPO, respectively). Since that time, the third order has been somewhat reformulated, and is now known as the Tau Maria (not a particularly eponymous handle, but hey -- I didn't pick it.)

What's all that have to do with my law practice?

Well, quite a bit. As I said, my practice is an extension of my faith. Okay, maybe I didn't actually say that, but I implied it.

It seems to me that we all live lives which are meant to be lived for some particular purpose. Of course there's the overriding purpose we learn (or for some, learned -- past-tense) in the Baltimore Catechism: "to know and love God in this life, and to serve Him in the next" (paraphrasing from a somewhat leaky 46 year old memory, here.) We all have that as a purpose.

But what I mean is an additional, more particular purpose.

Opus Dei has a wonderful take on this that I find particularly appealing, i.e., that we are called to sanctification through our vocational calling, whatever that may be. If you are called to be a surgeon, then you may attain holiness through the practice of surgery by offering your best "work" for God, as it were. If you are called to be a teacher, then by teaching for God. If you are called to work in a factory, etc., etc.

As a lawyer for the poor, I feel a certain calling to defend and counsel those who struggle with their finances. The importance of this work is or should be obvious in this consumption-driven culture, which upholds wealth as the greatest goal to be attained, and poverty as the worst evil to be avoided.

This may come as a shock to some people, but some believe that poverty is actually a virtue to be sought rather than an evil to be avoided at all costs. I know that the lawyer I ate lunch with a couple weeks ago certainly was (shocked, that it is.) I mentioned this in passing, and the reaction I got from him -- also a Catholic, and by all appearances a fine man -- was as if I'd calmly mentioned my being abducted by space aliens the night before. Incredulous wouldn't be far from the mark.

More at Part Two....