It’s a holiday in many North American jurisdictions today (including mine — someone decided that a day off in mid-February needed the patronizing label “Family Day”), and I’m at home working on a couple of projects anyway, so this seemed like a good day for something a little lighter. From Michel-Adrien Sheppard at SLAW comes this neat meme about random wisdom: open the nearest book, turn to page 123, read down five lines and write out the three sentences that appear next.

As it happens, the book on top of the pile I’m consulting for my projects is The Lawyer’s Calling: Christian Faith and Legal Practice, a 1996 work by Joseph G. Allegretti. Page 123 finds Allegretti discussing the character of Thomas More in Robert Bolt’s play A Man For All Seasons :

Part of the reason for More’s appeal to lawyers is his legalistic (in the good sense of the word!) approach to the problem of the oath [More had refused to sign one attesting to the legality of the king’s divorce]. An oath is composed of words, he says, and he will sign it if he can, if the words permit him. He is no plastic saint: he very much wants to live, and he will use his mind to escape punishment if it is possible to do so.

Allegretti likes that part of the play because it points up More’s humanity: he has no wish to become a martyr and will use his God-given legal skills to avoid that fate, so long as doing so does not interfere with his primary loyalty to God. That, of course, does not turn out to be possible, and More suffers accordingly. There’s a lot to chew over there about a lawyer’s duty to a client conflicting with his duty to his conscience, a subject we should talk about more than we do.

I’m partial to the real Thomas More for a host of personal and professional reasons, but the literary More in Bolt’s play makes a fascinating study in lawyers’ moral responsibilities. He’s one of two fictional professionals who I think really illuminate lawyers’ lives in this regard: the other is More’s opposite number, Stevens, the butler in Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day, who represents the consequences of allowing your employer’s judgment to substitute for your own (if you’ve only seen the movie, do yourself a favour and read the book, too — it focuses less on the thwarted romance and more on the moral obligations of servanthood).

For all I loved To Kill A Mockingbird, I never actually found Atticus Finch to be that intriguing a character as a lawyer. He’s too idealized and heroic to serve as a realistic role model for lawyers — never makes a mistake, always does the right thing. For my money, he’s a far more compelling figure, and a better role model, when viewed solely as a father (and that’s as far as I’ll go to mark Family Day).

So: what’s on the nearest page 123 to you today?