8 - Considerations on the Jeffrey Grant Case: Legal Ethics and Redemptive Knowledge

Summary

This chapter discusses a very different lawyer story: How a lawyer who went to prison for 9/11-related fraud got his law license back and became an ordained minister along the way. After nearly two decades without practicing, Jeffrey Grant got his law license back in May 2021. He served over a year in prison for lying about office space in order to get federal relief money after 9/11. He then went to seminary and opened a ministry serving white-collar defendants (Arvedlund, 2020; Dumas, 2018; Erb, 2020; Grant, 2020; Greene, 2021; Monaco, 2020; Osnos, 2021; Pavlo, 2019a, 2019b; Polverari, 2020). The ministry had several hundred members (White Collar Support Group, 2021). Grant noticed that many of the members had legal issues. This was one of his motives for getting his law license back (Coutu, 2021).

Grant’s role was not to be a defender, enabler, or investigator; it was to be a connector. The slogan for the community was the following statement: “It’s the isolation that destroys us. The solution is community” (White Collar Support Group, 2021). The mission of the community is given as follows (www.prisonist.org):

Our mission is to introduce you to other members of the white collar justice community, to hear their very personal stories, and hopefully gain a broader perspective of what this is really all about. Maybe this will inspire some deeper thoughts and introspection? Maybe it will inspire some empathy and compassion for people you might otherwise resent or dismiss? And maybe it will help lift us all out of our own isolation and into community, so we can learn to live again in the sunshine of the spirit.

Grant started his law career in the way many young lawyers would dream of starting. He launched his own firm shortly after graduating from the New York Law School in 1981 and grew it, first in Manhattan and then in Westchester County, adding employees and clients. He served as outside general counsel to two large real-estate companies and kept adding staff. But then the cracks appeared after he was prescribed opioids for pain relief after rupturing his Achilles tendon playing sport.