Beyond Thinking like a Lawyer: Lonergan's Transcendental Method and the Formation of Ethical Lawyers
Publication Date
9-14-2026
Digital Publisher
Digital Commons at St. Mary's University
Description
Law schools have long promised to teach students to "think like lawyers."1 We teach students to read cases carefully, identify legally significant facts, extract rules from precedent, distinguish adverse authority, construct arguments, and predict how courts are likely to resolve disputes. These are indispensable skills. But they leave open a more fundamental question: What kind of lawyer are we teaching our students to become?2 Legal education is extraordinarily good at teaching students how to determine what the law is and what the law allows. We are perhaps less intentional about teaching them to ask what, as lawyers, they ought to do with that knowledge.3 A lawyer may understand the governing doctrine perfectly, construct a persuasive argument, and accurately predict a legal outcome while never confronting whether the course of action she recommends is just, humane, or responsible. However, scholars have begun demonstrating that professional identity formation need not be confined to clinics, externships, or professional responsibility courses; it can occur within the ordinary doctrinal classroom.4 This Essay builds upon that insight by proposing Lonergan's transcendental method as a structure through which doctrinal teaching itself can become formative.5 Bernard Lonergan's transcendental method offers a useful framework for thinking about this gap in legal education. Lonergan describes authentic human inquiry through four interconnected movements of intentional consciousness: experience, understanding, judgment, and decision, expressed through the transcendental precepts to be attentive, be intelligent, be reasonable, and be responsible.6 Applied to legal education, these precepts suggest that forming a lawyer requires more than cultivating analytical competence. It requires cultivating habits of attentiveness, intellectual curiosity, reasoned judgment, and ultimately responsible action.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Collection
San Jose - Lonergan Chair in Catholic Philosophy
Format
Medium
manuscript
Size
11 pages
City
San Antonio, Texas
Document Type
Article
Included in
Legal Education Commons, Legal Ethics and Professional Responsibility Commons, Legal Profession Commons, Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Commons