Law students are sometimes resistance to the simple notion that learning how to be a lawyer is in reality, a way of learning to be a person. Some students, but by no means all, are convinced that being a lawyer and being a person are different enterprises and that one may engage in the one without undue concern for the other. Basically, lawyering is a purposeful activity and we give high honor to those among us most intent on getting somewhere, doing something, being something, having a career, gaining recognition, realizing the success that law makes possible. But we need, I think, to contrast purpose and mindfulness as they entail different values. Purpose, unmoderated, can push us toward mindlessness.
Mindful work is characterized by care, concern, attention, awareness, thoughtfulness.
Those overly committed to narrow purposes often become mindless as they fail to attend to the questions that surround their pursuits. Crossing Over . Lawyers witness, by the work they do for clients, every manner of human deprivation and failing, bar none, writ small, writ in the blood of the lamb and the innocent. Lawyers traffic in and profit from and come close to all that is vile and reprehensible in human behavior, all the while proclaiming to themselves and the world that they are justified by their profession and their work in trodding the paths they follow. But lawyers are, one suspects, always in danger of crossing the line, becoming tainted, eating of the forbidden fruit of the tree that sustains their livelhood.