With the coronavirus pandemic surging across the US and around the world, my family, along with millions of other Americans, will be sacrificing our usual Thanksgiving celebration in order to stay safe and to help prevent the spread of COVID-19. If you’re a lawyer who’s in the same boat, I hope that, like me, you still can find things to be thankful for, including your membership in our profession.
I don’t want to sound too much like a Pollyanna, but I continue to find many things about the legal community that make me proud and grateful. In my own Buckeye State, for instance, more than a thousand lawyers served as poll workers on Election Day. Nationwide, when the pandemic hit, nurse-attorneys left their offices and helped with front-line care-giving. And some law-firm competitors teamed up to deliver innovative client service in areas hit hard by the virus.
In past Thanksgiving messages, we’ve pointed out what a privilege it is to be a lawyer and the gratitude that should go along with our status: for our skill and training; the opportunity to do work with purpose; our ability to change society; the chance to help others and to grow ourselves.
All that continues to be true — and even more so, as our nation has been tested in recent months. Whatever our political persuasion, we can be grateful that we live in a nation where the rule of law has maintained its grip.
Let’s give thanks for the rule of law and our role as lawyers in upholding it. And let’s hope that next Thanksgiving we can gather with all our dear ones again.