PSAMMYESQUIRE

~WELCOME~

THE LAWYERS' PRAYER

Please, O God, give us good health with which to withstand the rigours of a most arduous profession – the law.

Please grant us equanimity which calms everyone around us and enable us to balance like a gyroscope in the storms of contest.

Give us peaceful sleep, for while we must keep our mind on our work, we must not keep our work on our minds.

Touch our words with eloquence, not in the sense of harangue, but in the true meaning of oratory-a flashing eye under a philosopher’s brow.

Diminish our worries, particularly those anticipated worries which are like interest paid on a debt that never comes due.

Increase our capacity for work, so that we will not suffer the fatigue of thought and will plough deep while sluggards sleep.

Please see to it that we never become afraid of the violence of an original idea or of a stretched mind.

Above all, O Lord, do not diminish our intensity for a client’s cause, for from it spring the flames which leap over the jury box and set fire to the convictions of the jurors.

We would pray that our efforts do not blind us to the uniqueness of love, the comfort of friendships, and the joys of a cultivated mind.

Please teach us horizontal as well as vertical faith-vertical in obeisance to you, horizontal in our obligations to the community.

We cannot control the length of our lives, but we can control the width and depth of our lives.  And we know that when you finally touch us with your fingers to permanent sleep and examines us, you will look not for medals or honourary degrees, but for scars suffered to make the world a little better place to live in. 

We thank you for casting us in the legal profession, dedicated to justice, imbued with the sanctity of reason.

The law has honoured us.  And we shall always honour the law.

-Louis Nizer