I've posted a (relatively) new paper on SSRN, Martin Luther King Jr.'s Lessons for Lawyers in a Time of Market Disruption. The abstract:
This essay, delivered as the 2014 Tabor Lecture at Valparaiso University Law School, argues that our conception of the lawyer’s work lacks a rich and full understanding of the human person. This absence may not only hurt the lawyer’s ability to derive meaning from her work and advance the common good, but also may contribute to a perception that lawyers are becoming expendable in a market of fungible business service providers. The failure is starkly apparent when one considers the anthropological commitments that permeated the work and worldview of Martin Luther King Jr. Though he was not a lawyer, he was an advocate for the interests of others, and he was a Christian who was able to live out his beliefs in ways that were accessible and influential to those who did not share the underlying religious premises. While King’s moral duties were not constrained by the more particular fiduciary duty that lawyers owe to their clients, I believe that lawyers overstate the degree to which their moral agency is so constrained, and in doing so, abdicate moral responsibility for their work. Lawyers who endeavor to practice with the person at the center, as King did, will act as: (1) subjects; (2) healers; (3) prophets; and (4) realists.