Every year, this season of holidays invites us to pause and take stock.
In our profession, that pause can be hard to find. Dockets pile up, calendars compress and the work keeps coming. Professional and personal observances and celebrations compete for time.
Yet precisely because of that frenetic pace, gratitude is not a luxury for lawyers and judges; it is a discipline. Practiced well, it sharpens our judgment, steadies our temperament and strengthens the public’s trust in the rule of law.
Perhaps most important, gratitude is a precious gift to convey to others and for us to enjoy expressing.
We can be thankful for many things:
First, gratitude for our calling. Few people are entrusted with the daily stewardship of constitutional values.
Whether you represent the state, the defense, a company, a family or you preside from the bench, you are part of a system designed to resolve conflict with reason, not force.
We don’t own that system—we borrow it from the public. Remembering that simple truth keeps us humble and accountable.
Second, gratitude for the people who make justice work. Courtroom clerks, judicial assistants, bailiffs, court reporters, interpreters, case managers and IT staff are the quiet engine of due process.
Jurors disrupt their lives to serve. Public defenders and prosecutors shoulder caseloads that would daunt most professionals. Civil practitioners navigate the complex lives of clients who show up with their livelihoods on the line. None of that is background noise; it is the sound of a constitutional democracy functioning.
Third, gratitude for our colleagues and mentors. The best of our profession teach us in hallways, at counsel table and in continuing education rooms that professionalism is not a style point, it is a promise to the public.
Civility isn’t a softness. It is a strength that keeps advocacy from fraying into personal animus and keeps judging from calcifying into cynicism.
Fourth, gratitude for access. We sometimes take for granted that our courthouses are open, our proceedings are recorded and our decisions are reviewable.
In many parts of the world, rights exist only on paper. Here, litigants can be heard, records can be built and errors can be corrected. That doesn’t happen by accident; it happens because we show up, keep learning and insist on doing the work the right way.
Fifth, gratitude for our families and communities. They carry the invisible weight of our calendars—late nights, early mornings, callbacks and weekend hearings. Our resilience is, in no small part, borrowed from theirs.
So how do we practice gratitude when the docket is long and the patience is short?
Begin with names
Learn—and use—the names of the people who support your courtroom and your practice. Recognition is a powerful form of thanks.
Model civility when it is hardest
Speak to opposing counsel (and about opposing counsel) with the same restraint you want the public to see from us.
Invest in learning
Give a CLE, mentor a younger lawyer or ask a senior colleague for a debrief after a tough hearing. Gratitude grows when we acknowledge how much we have to learn—and how much others can teach us.
Protect the record and the person
Correct your own mistakes promptly and graciously. The public notices when we put justice above ego.
Carry it forward
If the justice system was a ladder you climbed, hold it steady for the next person. If it was a door someone opened, keep it open.
Gratitude doesn’t reduce the workload or erase the hard cases. But it reframes the work from burden to stewardship, from exhaustion to service, from scarcity to purpose.
In that frame, the season’s simple invitation to pause and give thanks becomes an ethic we can live by all year.