I found myself asked recently to give a talk to Christian lawyers entitled: ‘Does God Love Family Lawyers?’ The title hinted at the anticipated ambivalence of the likely analysis. The short answer – ‘yes, but not all your fellow Christians may be so sure…’, set me thinking (not for the first time) about the degree to which a calling into contemporary family law practice is likely to prove a God-honouring, Christ-serving, neighbour-loving way of spending forty-odd years of working life.
When I began at the Bar it was common for Christian solicitors simply to let it be known ‘we don’t do divorce’ and for clients to be re-directed to a ‘good firm’ down the street. That never struck me as satisfactory. It is met less today, though for ‘divorce’ may occasionally now be substituted ‘civil partnership’, ‘cohabitation’, ‘gay relationships’, as if those relationships too may be more safely sorted out by someone more enthusiastic about alternative family arrangements.
But think logically. If all Christian lawyers stop practising family law, then the only people practising it will be non-Christians. How does that sound? In an area of law that reaches right across society, profoundly affects the most important and precious parts of any life, raises some of the most difficult issues of public and private morality and calls for unusual skill in damage limitation, are you telling me Christians should, in a quest for some sort of theological purity, steer clear?
The lawyer whose line is: ‘I don’t represent people like that’, has an immediate problem. Imagine if God had said to us: ‘I don’t serve bad people. I have a problem with the God-dishonouring mess your life has become … I suggest you go down the street’. That lawyer forgets that Jesus not only spent a good deal of time ministering to the guilty, the shabby and the dishonourable but also that He was – is – in the advocacy business and has some very unsavoury clients. Clients like us. Remember that the very principle of advocacy lies close to the heart of God’s redemptive purpose.
That helps (theologically if not jurisprudentially) with the old chestnut: ‘how do you defend someone you know is guilty’, asked of every budding criminal lawyer in their first ten minutes. Critics, including friends in the church, harbour a vague sense that not only might family lawyers be in similarly ethically ambiguous territory (‘shovelling smoke’, as Oliver Wendell Holmes memorably put it), they may even be doing something God ‘hates’ (as Malachi put it).
What will ‘moral lawyering’ look like today? What will it mean not just to be a lawyer who is a Christian but, better still, a Christian who is a lawyer – whose work actually counts for God?
The ‘hired gun’ approach, rapaciously tearing chunks out of the other side, won’t do. Nor, on its own, will the ‘social worker’ approach. The ‘prophetic helper’ perhaps comes closer to what is required.
As theologian Walter Brueggemann suggests, prophets come alongside and yet preserve some distance. They criticise but also energize. They hint at greater realities and point to an alternative vision of what might be. They don’t dictate to the client, but they call her back to her better self, they encourage deeper reflection. ‘Is this what you really want?; how will this affect your relationship with the children?; look at it from his point of view; the law lets you do it, but it’s a rotten thing to do.’ As Nobel prize winning lawyer Elihu Root put it: ‘about half the practice of a decent lawyer consists in telling would be clients that they are damn fools and should stop’.
Christian family lawyering requires a unique blend of competence, compassion, courage and conversation as we help our fellow citizens resolve conflict, find justice and navigate their way through some of the most profound and painful of all personal problems. That sounds to me like true ministry!
David Turner
His Honour Judge David Turner QC is a Circuit Judge living and working in London.
| Lawyers -Who Needs Them? |
I found myself asked recently to give a talk to Christian lawyers entitled: ‘Does God Love Family Lawyers?’ The title hinted at the anticipated ambivalence of the likely analysis. The short answer – ‘yes, but not all your fellow Christians may be so sure…’, set me thinking (not for the first time) about the degree to which a calling into contemporary family law practice is likely to prove a God-honouring, Christ-serving, neighbour-loving way of spending forty-odd years of working life. When I began at the Bar it was common for Christian solicitors simply to let it be known ‘we don’t do divorce’ and for clients to be re-directed to a ‘good firm’ down the street. That never struck me as satisfactory. It is met less today, though for ‘divorce’ may occasionally now be substituted ‘civil partnership’, ‘cohabitation’, ‘gay relationships’, as if those relationships too may be more safely sorted out by someone more enthusiastic about alternative family arrangements. But think logically. If all Christian lawyers stop practising family law, then the only people practising it will be non-Christians. How does that sound? In an area of law that reaches right across society, profoundly affects the most important and precious parts of any life, raises some of the most difficult issues of public and private morality and calls for unusual skill in damage limitation, are you telling me Christians should, in a quest for some sort of theological purity, steer clear? The lawyer whose line is: ‘I don’t represent people like that’, has an immediate problem. Imagine if God had said to us: ‘I don’t serve bad people. I have a problem with the God-dishonouring mess your life has become … I suggest you go down the street’. That lawyer forgets that Jesus not only spent a good deal of time ministering to the guilty, the shabby and the dishonourable but also that He was – is – in the advocacy business and has some very unsavoury clients. Clients like us. Remember that the very principle of advocacy lies close to the heart of God’s redemptive purpose. That helps (theologically if not jurisprudentially) with the old chestnut: ‘how do you defend someone you know is guilty’, asked of every budding criminal lawyer in their first ten minutes. Critics, including friends in the church, harbour a vague sense that not only might family lawyers be in similarly ethically ambiguous territory (‘shovelling smoke’, as Oliver Wendell Holmes memorably put it), they may even be doing something God ‘hates’ (as Malachi put it). What will ‘moral lawyering’ look like today? What will it mean not just to be a lawyer who is a Christian but, better still, a Christian who is a lawyer – whose work actually counts for God? The ‘hired gun’ approach, rapaciously tearing chunks out of the other side, won’t do. Nor, on its own, will the ‘social worker’ approach. The ‘prophetic helper’ perhaps comes closer to what is required. As theologian Walter Brueggemann suggests, prophets come alongside and yet preserve some distance. They criticise but also energize. They hint at greater realities and point to an alternative vision of what might be. They don’t dictate to the client, but they call her back to her better self, they encourage deeper reflection. ‘Is this what you really want?; how will this affect your relationship with the children?; look at it from his point of view; the law lets you do it, but it’s a rotten thing to do.’ As Nobel prize winning lawyer Elihu Root put it: ‘about half the practice of a decent lawyer consists in telling would be clients that they are damn fools and should stop’. Christian family lawyering requires a unique blend of competence, compassion, courage and conversation as we help our fellow citizens resolve conflict, find justice and navigate their way through some of the most profound and painful of all personal problems. That sounds to me like true ministry! David Turner His Honour Judge David Turner QC is a Circuit Judge living and working in London.
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Insightful reflection about the attitude a Christian lawyer should take. I was unsure whether the appeal to the ‘advocacy of God’ would stand up in, eh, court. Christ is certainly the Advocate for all, but not one who gives legal support in pursuing what is morally ambiguous. Rather his role is to plead that the consequences of the defendant’s acknowledged guilt have been taken care of by himself. I thought the later example of the Christian lawyer’s ‘kingdom’ perspective made a stronger case in her continuing to be a dispenser of kingdom values in an imperfect world.
Excellent P.S. Thanks you!
A related matter is whether Protestant and Unionist and British lawyers in Northern Ireland should invest In human rights and equality, or in other fields, defending the interests nationalists and republicans.
As an undergraduate, I never seriously considered studying human rights law, as it seemed to be a subject that belonged to an alien agenda. Now I realise that Human Rights (in principle, if not in every expression thereof) is not an alien agenda, but a logical consequence of Christian theology. Christian commitment to the human person – as made in God’s image to reflect God’s glory, and despite depravity of sin, capable of redemption and recipient of mercy and grace -makes it critical that Christians not abandon the field. To do so is to allow a perception that Christianity is about moralising for the righteous rather than effecting redemption for the sinner. I particularly appreciate David Turner’s clear self-identification of “us” as sinners requiring grace. This self-understanding of all as sinners and all of immense worth is what gives undergirding for legal equality, justice and due process.