Good Counselor Project Impact Story: Finding the Sacred in the Practice of Law

By Evelyn Whitehead

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Last year, I participated in Napa Legal’s Good Counselor Fellowship: a program dedicated to immersing young lawyers in the great books of the Western tradition and inculcating in us a love for the life of virtue. These days, our profession isn’t known for its virtue and it is high time for a change.  

America puts a great deal of stock in the idea of a tolerant, value-neutral society. Unsurprisingly, many lawyers have fallen into the trap of thinking that, therefore, they themselves should live value-neutral lives. That is a sad state of affairs because human beings are designed to respond to transcendental values—the true, the good, and the beautiful—not only in their personal lives but also in their work. Virtue doesn’t stop at the office door. But all too frequently, professionals can forget that the road to virtue and to holiness is found in everyday life: the next email, the next client, the next meeting.  

By highlighting the great books of the Western canon, facilitating discussion, and making adoration, confession, and the Mass the heart of its program, the Good Counselor Project gives its fellows the chance to reshape and rethink what it means to practice law well. Lawyers are called to give counsel—and giving good counsel hinges on having a good moral compass and a properly ordered vision of the world and our place within it. Luckily, many great thinkers have considered these questions, and their insights provide a starting point for fruitful and continuing dialogue and reflection. During our fellowship, we read Homer, Sophocles, Plato, Dante, Aristotle, and Aquinas. We pondered human motivation, the sources of law, virtue, justice, civil disobedience, and the formation and preservation of good government. And at the beginning and end of each discussion, we prayed for wisdom.  

The Good Counselor Project takes the secular and finds the sacred. It transforms independent individuals into fellow laborers (in the vineyard) seeking the shared vision that C.S. Lewis puts at the heart of friendship. It reminded me of my professional vocation: the call to be excellent in my professional life because being faithful to Christ in small matters actually matters a great deal. I’m incredibly grateful to have had the opportunity to participate and highly recommend this program to all young lawyers who are looking for a renewed purpose and vision for their work in the midst of the persistently darkening world.