My lecture is entitled The Vocation of a Lawyer and the Virtues. In this talk, although I situate the

discussion in the context of the legal profession, I am not just speaking to lawyers and would-be

lawyers, but to anyone who needs to interpret rules and apply them for someone else, and also to

anyone who advises other people. And even if you do not fall into

one of these categories, I do hope that there is something of interest for everyone in the discussion

on vocation and virtue. As a very preliminary matter, as Father Richard noted in the introduction,

although I'm a law professor, I also still represent clients both as a

consultant and as a practicing lawyer. So just as this talk fits somewhere between philosophy

and professional development, my own work has one foot in the academic and one foot in the

practical. My paper has three parts. First is a discussion generally about vocation and virtue,

which has woven throughout definitions of each word. It's important that I define what I mean by

virtue and vocation for three reasons. First, because I'm a lawyer and we lawyers delight in

definitions. Second, I'm delivering this and we lawyers delight in definitions.

Second, I'm delivering this paper in Oxford, the epicenter of all things analytic.

Parsing words runs in the water here.

And third, a very practical reason.

We need to have a working understanding of what I am going to talk about,

and the concepts of virtue and vocation are not necessarily

popular concepts in Western culture today. I will warn you that the first part on vocation and

virtue takes up about half my paper. The second part is a discussion of the four cardinal virtues,

prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance, and how they relate to lawyers and

advisors, and how they can ennoble the role of lawyers and the role that lawyers and advisors play.

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