Initiative on Spirituality in the Professions
The law is a service profession. Serving others is intrinsically satisfying. Yet many lawyers report a low level of satisfaction with their work. Why?
The Notre Dame Initiative on Spirituality in the Professions believes that the answer to this question lies in a spiritual response to the challenges a lawyer faces in the profession and invites members of the legal community and others to join in offering spiritual and pastoral care to fellow lawyers.
Check out Bob's blog on Spirit and the Law
BLOG - Daily posts from Br. Bob Sylvester, C.S.C., on being Catholic, belief, culture, the law, spirituality, prayer, and much more...
Table of Contents:
- Challenges to the Legal Profession
- Spiritual Care in the Workplace
- Benefits of Spiritual Care in the Workplace
- Spiritual Care Provider
- Clips from an Interview at Notre Dame
- Contact Information
- Download the Brochure
- Bob's blog on Spirit and the Law
Challenges to the Legal Profession
Like many professionals in our society, lawyers seek full human development in a profession that is highly cognitive and frequently combative. Often, their work cannot fully satisfy them. Beyond monetary reward and professional accomplishments, lawyers, like all people, search for meaning in their lives.
This search is more than psychological; it is grounded in the human spirit.
Studies conducted in the last 20 years show a high level of depression, drug and alcohol abuse, turnover, and even a higher-than-average suicide rate among lawyers. These and other challenges affect the individual lawyer, the firm, the client, the institution of the law, our society, and its governance and well-being. They are manifestations of dissatisfaction and unhappiness.
This is an area in need of greater attention. However, very few indigenous resources are presently available to help lawyers decipher meaning from their work.
The Notre Dame Initiative on Spirituality in the Professions addresses this question: How can lawyers attend to their spiritual needs, integrating their values with their thoughts, feelings, and actions, to achieve greater satisfaction and meaning in their work?
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Spiritual Care in the Workplace
Persons and organizations who want to explore personal and spiritual development need readily available one-on-one access to someone trained in the field - in this case, an experienced lawyer with extensive training in spirituality and work in spiritual care.
The Notre Dame Initiative on Spirituality in the Professions offers a unique program that provides spiritual care and expertise as an integrative aspect of lawyers' professional lives. The program:
- Provides confidential one-on-one spiritual and pastoral care
- Builds a referral network among the local religious and pastoral counseling community
- Utilizes appropriate vehicles and venues to educate and build community (e.g., informal luncheon conversations, social gatherings, retreats, speakers, etc.) This effort can be offered within the workplace or as an outsourced function.
The Initiative's program of spiritual care:
- Attends to the holisitic development of the human person
- Attends to the needs and goals of the organization
- Utilizes empathetic listening and recognizes that religion is a private matter and spirituality is a human reality
- Does not proselytize nor preach and is universal in its scope
Full human development requires spiritual care and companionship that educates and nurtures growth and understanding. Spiritual care can provide perspective, the opportunity for better relationships (both personal and professional), and a more constructive handling of the inevitable issue and problems that are part of any professional environment.
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Benefits of Spiritual Care in the Workplace
Some benefits of spiritual care in a stressful, high-risk profession:
For the firm and its management...
- Provides management with a unique resource to attend to the difficult personal problems of the firm's attorneys
- Can assist with intra-firm mediation and the provider can serve an ombudsman's role
- Provides immediate assistance to those firm members who experience life-altering problems
For the individual lawyer...
- Increases the ability to constructively handle problems
- Offers early intervention in matters apt to result in personal crisis
- Enables them to see "work as vocation" and strenghtens their identity and firm loyalty
For clients, lawyer recruitment, the firm's public image, and the local community...
- Increases clients' comfort and confidence in the firm and its lawyers
- Shows potential new hires a dedication to their welfare and development
- Identifies the firm with principled innovation and commitment to high ideals
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Spiritual Care Provider
Br. Robert Sylvester, C.S.C., is an experienced lawyer with ministerial experience and training in theology, spirituality, pastoral psychology, and the challenges of faith in contemporary culture and the workplace.
Bob is a Holy Cross brother and the director of the Initiative on Spirituality in the Professions at the University of Notre Dame's Institute for Church Life. As a lawyer for over 25 years, he worked in public policy and in private practice in the Washington, D.C. area. His areas of expertise include faith and secular culture and the impact of contemporary culture on the lives and work of highly-educated professionals. His experience includes spiritual development for lawyers and life and career discernment.
Bob has a J.D. from Southern Methodist University and degrees from the School of Advanced International Studies of The Johns Hopkins University (M.A. in American foreign policy) and the University of Notre Dame (M.A. in theology) with additional post-graduate training in spirituality, pastoral psychology, pastoral counseling, and pastoral theology.
Bob has experienced a range of challenges in his life and work. An attentive listener, he is a compassionate and insightful narrator of human experience, particularly as it is encountered in the practice of law.
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Clips from an Interview at Notre Dame
What is the need for a spiritual care ministry?
Why is Bob offering this ministry?
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Contact information
Br. Robert E. Sylvester, C.S.C.
Director, Initiative on Spirituality in the Professions
321 Geddes Hall
Notre Dame, IN 46556
574-631-8076
202-306-5676 (cell)
xlbobs@msn.com