Episodes

My most recent guest for Higher Callings is Stephen Seckler. After graduating from law school, Steve took a job with Massachusetts Continuing Legal Education, where he organized hundreds of educational programs for lawyers over several years. He then formed his own business, helping lawyers learn how to market their services, serving as a legal recruiter, and serving as a career coach for lawyers. Steve also has an excellent podcast called Counsel to Counsel, where lawyers can find career advice from Steve and the impressive guests he interviews.  When I spoke with Steve about appearing on this podcast, we agreed that his higher calling is helping lawyers find their callings. Some of his most recent work has focused on coaching senior lawyers about how they can prepare for what lies ahead when the time comes for them to leave their law practices and pursue the next chapter in their professional lives. We talked about that and other topics on this episode of Higher Callings. You …

In 1963, in a case called Gideon v. Wainwright, the United States Supreme Court held for the first time that a person accused of a crime in a state court has a right to counsel secured by the United States Constitution. Before that decision, a defendant’s federal constitutional right to an attorney in a criminal proceeding applied only in federal cases, by virtue of the Sixth Amendment. In Gideon, the Court applied the Fourteenth Amendment’s due process clause to extend the same right to state criminal cases. Ever since Gideon, when defendants in state criminal prosecutions cannot afford to hire counsel, the state is obligated to provide counsel for them.   In Massachusetts, the agency responsible to make sure that happens is the Committee for Public Counsel Services, or CPCS. The Chief Counsel for CPCS is Anthony Benedetti, an attorney who himself served as a public defender before becoming General Counsel and, in 2010, Chief Counsel of this important agency.   I recently had t…

I got to know Michael Bogdanow when we co-chaired the Litigation Section of the Boston Bar Association in the early 2000’s. An alum of Harvard Law School and chair of the appellate practice at a small but powerful personal injury law firm, Michael also is an accomplished artist. His vivid paintings of themes from the Hebrew Bible and his more secular works of colorful skies and flying planets reveal an artist who has always viewed art as a calling, and one that has many parallels with his other calling of appellate law. We explore these topics and more in this art-themed episode of Higher Callings.

(Photo: Kevin and Denise Reilly) Denise Reilly is a judge on the Minnesota Court of Appeals. As a religion major in college, her passion for justice instilled in her a calling to become a lawyer. While raising a young family, she attended law school. She then served as a law clerk to a federal district judge, joined a large private law firm, and later became a federal prosecutor.  Denise then heard another calling, this time to become a judge. She applied and was appointed to the state district court bench, and worked for seven years as a judge in Juvenile Court, work that she still considers to be among the most important of her career. In 2009, Denise was selected to serve as one member of the three-judge panel to preside over the trial that resulted in Al Franken’s election to the United States Senate.  Denise’s work on the bench is just one way in which she has dedicated herself to the public interest. She also has made important contributions to the fight against illegal…

Last week I had the privilege of publishing portions of my interview of Rev. Pashington Obeng in which he described his work with descendants of Africans living in India, known as the Siddis. In this bonus episode, we shift our focus from India to Africa, as Pash describes an exciting project being built in his home country of Ghana, known as the Pan African Heritage World Museum.  A link to the Museum's website can be found here: https://pahw.org/

Reverend Pashington Obeng, Ph.D. is a Protestant minister and scholar, who was born and raised in Ghana, West Africa, and has been living and working in Massachusetts for more than 30 years. In 1998, he learned of a community of people of African descent, known as the Siddis, who have lived in India for more than 800 years. Some of their ancestors were brought to India as enslaved people, and some have continued to be burdened with working off the inherited debts of their ancestors through an Indian system known as "debt bondage." In this episode of Higher Callings, Pash tells the story of the Siddi people, and describes some of the work that he and members of his church have done in support of the school for Siddi children run by Catholic nuns and Jesuit priests in Karnataka, India. You can find a transcript of this episode here: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1755120/episodes/9217036 You can learn more about the Siddis at this website: https://africanindianalliance.org/ You can lear…

Dr. Tom Benninger is a retired physician who lives in Louisville, Kentucky. On more than a dozen occasions, Tom, along with other volunteers, traveled to third world countries where they worked to address the medical needs of people who had little access to healthcare. Motivated by a deep and abiding faith, Tom has participated in medical missions in the Dominican Republic, Afghanistan, and Nicaragua. After briefly discussing Tom’s background, I asked him to describe those experiences and how his faith inspired him to serve. I’m sure you’ll find his story as inspiring as I do.