The ancient Greeks understood virtues not as mere mind sets to adopt, but rather as ways of living to embrace. First comes the virtue and only then comes the virtuous conduct. To which virtues should we as lawyers aspire? Here are my nomination for The Virtuous Trinity: Gratitude, Humility, Empathy.

Gratitude. We do nothing alone. Nothing. Ozigar Kongtrul writes in Light Comes Through: Buddhist Teachings on Awakening to Our Natural Intelligence that “the truth is that are attributes are not possessable…. No one is truly self-made from the start. So many factors contribute to who we are—we are not a closed system.” Try this exercise. Consider your life without its blessings and then write out how your life could have turned out differently, not differently better, but differently worse. Doing so isolates the factors that made you who you are and over which you possessed zero control. Gratitude vaccinates against temptation, radiates an even demeanor; creates a solid center. As Hamlet lauded his counselor Horatio, “for you hast been as one in suffering all that suffers nothing. A man that Fortune’s buffets and rewards/ hast taken with equal thanks.”