Confronting Moral Injury: Winning in Law Without Losing Yourself

"In a lot of respects, the legal system is a moral ordering system," says Jody Sanders—one built on competing interests and an outcomes-based way of measuring success that, he argues, rarely tells the whole story. In this episode, Jody and Todd Smith explore a concept most lawyers have felt but never had a word for: moral injury. Jody recently completed the ten-week Moral Injury Certificate Program at TCU's Brite Divinity School and walks Todd through his capstone slides. They connect it to earlier conversations on the show, including E154's look at the existential side of appellate work and E40's pandemic-era episode with TLAP's Chris Ritter, then dig into dehumanization in the legal system and the toll of wrongful convictions like Timothy Cole's. Hear why Jody says lawyers owe themselves more grace than they usually give.

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