The Patron Saint of Lawyers Wants YOU To Master IOLTA
St. Thomas More
(Patron Saint of Lawyers) (1478 – 1535)
The more things change, the more they stay the same (no punn intended). We can learn alot about the modern practice of law from our Patron Saint Sir Thomas More (Beatified1886, Rome by Pope Leo XIII).
Nowadays most solo lawyers and lawyers who own small law firms tend to feel isolated. Maybe it’s because they don’t realize that throughout history solo lawyers have always been and for reasons discussed below I believe always will be in the vast majority of lawyers in the World. Certainly that has been the case here in the U.S.
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Our patron saint was born in London, on February 7 1478, He was the eldest son of a successful lawyer and educated first at St Anthony’s School, then considered one of the finest schools in London, and later spent the years 1490 to 1492 as a page in the household service of John Morton, the Archbishop of Canterbury and lord Chancellor of England. Morton was an enthusiastic supporter of the ‘New Learning’ of the Renaissance, and thought highly of the young More. Believing that More showed great potential, Morton nominated him for a place at Canterbury College, Oxford, where More began his studies in 1492 and became proficient in both Greek and Latin. He left Oxford in 1494, after only two years at the insistence of his father, to begin his legal training in London at the New Inn, one of the Inns of Chancery. In 1496 he became a student at Lincoln’s Inn, one of the Inns of Court, where he remained until 1502, when he was called to the bar
Interesting isn’t it?
Five hundred and fifty years separate us from Thomas More and yet his path to becoming a lawyer is remarkably-similar to the path so many the rest of us followed.
Let’s see what other similarities there may be. . .
More once seriously contemplated abandoning his legal career in order to become a monk and although he deeply admired the piety of the monks, he ultimately decided on the life of a layman upon his marriage and election to Parliament in 1504.
Lots of lawyers today struggled with other career opportunities and the path not taken haunts most lawyers I know. Like More we also tend to bring with us to our profession a sense of a higher calling, don’t we?
Despite of his choice to pursue a secular career, More continued to observe certain ascetical practices for the rest of his life, including occasionally engaging in flagellation (1) & (2).
I’ve already written extensively about the “Doctrine of Sacrifice” which has seeped into our profession and how it has lawyers (mistakenly) believing that sacrificing your happiness is an inherent and noble part of “serving” clients. This way of thinking turns you into the servant and clients into your masters – and adds insult to the injury by saying you should find happiness in the sacrifice!
Gee, imagine that! Our Patron Saint was given to self-punishment as a form of religious obedience. And nowadays lawyers go around taking pride in how MANY hours they work for their law firms seemingly oblivious to the self-destructive nature of selling hours when our clients and our families would much prefer us to deliver results efficiently and get home in time to enjoy our lives.
Yes, in fact, most lawyers DO have a big hole in our education when it comes to the practical realities of law firm marketing and even worse when it comes to law office management.
But the BIGGER PROBLEM, I eventually realized years-ago, which prevents so many otherwise-capable and intelligent lawyers from taking the tools I gave them and using those tools to make big improvements in terms of revenues and personal and professional satisfaction, was that they were not-yet ready to believe that they DESERVED to be happy.
Sadly for them, the fact of the matter is that most lawyers are not-yet-ready to let-go of this old familiar pain. Notwithstanding the fact that it leads to too many days spent worrying about cash flow, too many hours of self-sacrifice in the office, and service to clients and on cases that those lawyers don’t have any passion for.
Instead, with the right law firm marketing and law office management skills you don’t have to choose between happiness, cash flow, or the ethical practice of law. You really can have all three. In point of fact, notwithstanding the example set for us by our Patron Saint, for hundreds of years lawyers have been learning, improving-upon and enjoying the benefits of professional, ethical and profitable law firm marketing & law practice management skills, tools & techniques.
And you know what? If you strip-away all the technology what worked hundreds of years ago for the lawyers who came before us is STILL working for those of us who take it upon ourselves to learn How To Manage A Small Law Firm.
Right now, but for only a little while longer you can learn how to master a critical law practice management skill that can contribute to more professional , ethical and more profitable law firm marketing too. Or it can feel like self-flagellation and turn what SHOULD be a profitable law firm management tool into an instrument of intimidation and torture.
Visit www.LawyerControl.com right now and register to watch the FREE training “A Simple System For Managing A Law Firm Client Property Trust Account That WON’T Make You Feel Like A Schmuck”.
I certainly have no ambitions of being Canonized as the next Patron Saint of my fellow lawyers.
But I am on a mission to combat the Doctrine of Sacrifice and help all my fellow lawyers experience for themselves that Happy Lawyers Really Do Make MORE Money.(this time the punn was intended) 
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(1) Rebhorn, Wayne A, editor. Utopia. New York: Barnes & Noble Classics. 2005. Introduction, pg xxi
(2) The Flagellation refers in a Christian context to the Flagellation of Christ, an episode in the Passion of Christ prior to the Jesus’ crucifixion. The practice of mortification of the flesh for religious purposes was utilized by some Christians throughout most of Christian history, especially in Catholic monasteries and convents.some Christians throughout most of Christian history, especially in Catholic monasteries and convents.
good to know we have great (500-year-old) example to follow!
Yes, More said he would rather be a chaste husband (faithful), than an impure priest.
The thing is, More eventually ended up with his head on a pike, martyred in the tower of London since he would not renounce the Pope and the join the Church of England. That is the tricky part for us lawyers, not losing our souls in the practice of law and yet at the same time not ending up losing our heads.
Great email!
Elizabeth A. Honce
Attorney at Law
1207 1/2 Iron SW
Albuquerque, NM 87102
(505) 410-3861(office)
(877)468-1218 (fax)
Actually there’s a patron saint for almost every profession you can imagine.
Thomas Moore rose as high as you could go in the king’s court. His problem arose when the king (henry VIII ?) wanted him to recognize his divorce so he could be with his mistress. He was imprisoned for several years before he was finally killed. That was the genesis of the Church of the England – if you the church doesn’t approve of what your are doing, then just start a new church. Thomas Moore is famous for the saying “The King’s Good servant, but God’s first”
Not sure was he has do with trust accounting, but you can’t pick a better example who refused to go along with something he believed was wrong. Thanks for reminding us of what we can all aspire to.
Thanks Walter,
The connection between our Patron Saint and our IOLTA account is that Moore was known to be so committed to his aspirations that he would occasionally self-flagellant. That is, in an effort to demonstrate his commitment he would physically harm himself.
Next time you go to a Bar Mixer & you’re standing around with a group of lawyers try this experiment. You just find an opportunity in the conversation to sigh & mention that you spent fifty hours in the office last week. Then see if some other lawyer doesn’t try & out-do you by announcing he or she spent MORE time in the office than you did. 9 out of 10 times this experiment will work.
So why do you suppose lawyers are going around taking pride in how many hours they’re spending in the office instead of how efficiently their offices run so they can invest more hours with their family & friends? Isn’t spending time at the office the modern lawyers’ way of demonstrating his or her commitment, albeit to a different deity?
Don’t lawyers find all kinds of ways to make things MORE difficult for themselves than things have to be? And then take pride in how hard they work, instead of how efficiently we run our practices?
A ritual is any prescribed code of behavior regulating social conduct. For self-flagellants it’s the ritual of beating themselves upon the back with a leather whip until they tear the flesh to demonstrate solidarity with Jesus. For lawyers its the ritual of “working hard” for our clients instead of working smart for them and for ourselves. There are partners of law firms who half-way-brag about the number of divorces they’re on because of their commitment to the law firm!
Of course we don’t use a leather whip to demonstrate our commitment to helping our clients but we allow ourselves to be surrounded by other instruments of pain.
Like our IOLTA client property trust accounts.
Think about how ludicrous this is: We graduate from law school and we’re told over & over & over again about the heavy weight of responsibility we have for managing & accounting for our clients’ money and property. That if we don’t we’re going to lose our bar licenses (akin to going to hell). But then those very same people who tell us about how bad things are going to go for us if we screw-up our IOLTA’s…they don’t bother to ever actually teach us a simple system for how to set-up, manage & reconcile a law firm client property trust account?!?!?
And hundreds-of-thousands of lawyers simply accept this arrangement without question, no they actually take pride in how many hours they have to spend in the office???
Our patron saint certainly gave us plenty to aspire to. But going out of our way to make things harder on ourselves than they have to be shouldn’t be one of them.