Inviting the Bell: A Preliminary Exploration of Buddhist Lawyers in the United States

Abstract

What does it mean to say that one is a “Buddhist lawyer” in the United States? This project explores that question through the narratives of fifteen lawyers who practice law in diverse legal settings across America. The project presents a unique opportunity to investigate and consider how one group of lawyers have cultivated a practice of law that pushes against the dominate notion that American lawyers are hired guns committed to an unrelenting adversarial process. The project importantly advances scholarship about the legal profession by offering rich and nuanced descriptive data about a set of lawyers generally not considered by the existing literature.

Keywords: law & religion, legal profession, Buddhism, legal ethics