60. CLS CEO Dave Nammo on Lawyers' Habits, Lawyers' Hope

The Christian Legal Society is an organization dedicated to helping lawyers think biblically and missionally about their work. Through its Law Student Ministries, Legal Aid Ministries, Attorney Ministries, and the Center for Law & Religious Freedom, CLS serves lawyers and law students as they seek to serve Christ in their law practice and study. As we think through these issues, we focus on how we steward our gifts in the law and how we love our neighbors through law practice and study.

Yet what about the shaping influences on lawyers themselves? How do our professional practices and particulars of legal training influence us as human beings Surely the law school experience, our training, billing time, and the adversary system work to influence us in specific ways.

Dave Nammo, CLS's Executive Director and CEO, has been working in law-focused ministry since 1999, and he spends much of his time on the road talking with Christian lawyers and law students. In this episode (#60), host Mike Schutt talks with Dave about the influences that shape us as lawyers and law students-- for good or ill-- and what countercultural practices might be called for in response.

Recent books, like Jamie Smith's You are What You Love and Tish Warren's Liturgy of the Ordinary, raise issues of the habits and practices necessary to "aim our loves," in the words of Smith. 

Listen in as Mike and Dave get the discussion started on how we can be more intentional in resisting the profession's shaping power, and how lawyers' habits can help "aim us" in the right direction as well. 

David Nammo is Executive Director and CEO of the Christian Legal Society in Springfield, VA. 

Host Mike Schutt is Director of CLS Law Student Ministries and Attorney Ministries. He is Associate Professor of Law at Regent University, CLS' ministry partner in the Institue for Christian Legal Studies.