Darrell Kelly
Ignatian discernment guides Jesuit-educated attorneys, and one attorney in training, through the ethics of the law practice
By Garan Santicola
Garan Santicola is an award-winning writer who lives in the Catskills mountains of upstate New York.
He can be reached at
garansanticola@gmail.com.
In the spring of 2018, Darrell Kelly received two advanced degrees on the same day: a juris doctorate from the University of Cincinnati, and an MBA from Xavier University. In graduating from Xavier, Kelly followed in the footsteps of his grandmother, who earned a bachelor’s degree from Xavier at the age of 73.
Today, Kelly works for Paramount Pictures as Counsel in Business and Legal Affairs, negotiating and drafting contracts for several shows, including Lioness. He is one of many Jesuit-educated attorneys navigating the sometimes-fraught world of law with an Ignatian sensibility as his compass.
He graduated from high school at 16 and received his undergraduate degree from Howard University in Washington, D.C., before returning to Cincinnati to live at home while pursuing his MBA and law degree. All the while, he worked two part-time jobs, as a graduate assistant at Xavier and an extern at a local law firm. Two new advanced degrees in hand, Kelly moved to Hollywood with just one interview lined up. Before landing at Paramount, he found work with Creative Artists Agency and then moved on to MGM, where he was one of two attorneys reviewing contestant
THE PIECE FOCUSED ON THE DUTY TO BE ETHICAL NO MATTER THE SITUATION, AND IT STILL HANGS ON THE WALL IN THE WILLIAMS COLLEGE OF BUSINESS.
applications and establishing rules for The Voice. Today, the Xavier ethos continues to resonate in his life as he engages in mentorship of newcomers to the entertainment business.
“The Jesuit way of teaching impressed upon me the importance of ethics,” Kelly says. “Xavier instilled in us the value of being attentive and reflective, which are two factors that allow room for the development of discernment.”
As a Cintas Ethics Fellow at Xavier, Kelly created an art piece reflecting this Jesuit way. “The piece focused on the duty to be ethical no matter the situation,” he says, “and it still hangs on the wall in the Williams College of Business. In my artwork, you see the words, ‘See the truth, hear the truth, say the truth,’ which stays with me until this day.”
Patrick Harrington
Patrick Harrington was in high school when he began to consider following in the footsteps of his father to become a lawyer. But first he followed his three brothers (he also has two sisters) to John Carroll University for his undergraduate degree. Later, when it was time to decide what kind of lawyer he would become after graduating from Loyola University Chicago School of Law in 1985, Harrington followed his father’s lead again, choosing to represent injured railroad workers under the Federal Employers’ Liability Act (FELA).
“I had a special relationship with my dad,” he says. “I saw in him the compassion to do whatever he could to help workers and their families in extremely difficult situations.”
As a newly minted attorney, Harrington joined the family firm to practice alongside his father, and eight years later, his father lost a long fight with cancer, having worked right up to the end of his life. Today, as a partner at Petro & Harrington LLC in Chicago, Harrington carries on his father’s legacy of representing railroad workers in compensation cases where survival often hangs in the balance.
“You spend a lot of time just listening and talking, and being a counselor in addition to a lawyer,” he says of the approach he learned from his father.
Harrington’s Jesuit education has had a lasting impact on both his work and his life. He met his wife, the former Marigayle Watts, as a volunteer during law school at Old Saint Patrick’s Church. She was from the Chicago area and went to Marquette University for her undergrad and her MBA degrees. Now they have five children. Two daughters attended Marquette, and a son went to Creighton University.
“There is a big service component to my work,” Harrington says. “I don’t get paid by the hour, and you’ve got to take the time and listen to folks and be compassionate. I honestly think I learned those tremendous life lessons in college through community service with the Jesuits.”
Judge Douglas F. Johnson
Throughout a distinguished career in the justice system, retired Judge Douglas F. Johnson placed the dignity of the person above all else. This approach came not only from his time in the Society of Jesus, discerning a call to the priesthood, but later, as a lay person studying at Creighton University School of Law.
Johnson presided over the Separate Juvenile Court of Nebraska for 26 years, and taught at Creighton
I VIEW MY TEACHING AS AN EXTENSION OF MY OWN JESUIT EDUCATION. IT’S ABOUT PLANTING SEEDS FOR OTHERS TO GET OUT THERE AND MAKE A DIFFERENCE IN THEIR OWN WAY.
for 25. Today, he offers workshops around the country on best practices in the juvenile justice field through the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges (NCJFCJ). In 1994, he implemented the first Court Appointed Special Advocate Program for Douglas County, Neb., which enlists community members to help safeguard the rights of juveniles in the justice system. In 2005, he started the state’s first Family Drug Treatment Court to streamline care and establish stability for young children and their families, and in 2010, he was honored with the Creighton School of Law Alumni Merit Award.
“I think my Jesuit training was pivotal,” he says, citing the retreats and spiritual direction. “I’m still grateful for that to this day. And when I went to Creighton, it felt good to be at a Jesuit law school, where we would continue to talk about and work on that sense of mission. I view my teaching as an extension of my own Jesuit education. It’s about planting seeds for others to get out there and make a difference in their own way.”
During law school, Johnson met his wife, Mary Boatwright, a Creighton graduate who was working at a domestic violence shelter. They met in St. John’s Parish on the Creighton campus and got married there in August of 1987. Today, Mary works as a therapist, and Johnson credits her with inspiring their two daughters to work in a similar Ignatian capacity. “They want to raise hearts and minds in service one way or another,” Johnson says.
Zahara Madahah
Detroit Police Officer Zahara Madahah just might be a judge in the making. An officer since 2019, her interest in the legal profession was piqued simply by visiting the University of Detroit Mercy School of Law. In the spring of 2023, she completed her first year there as a student.
“That school chose me,” she says. “The first time I walked in there, I saw Judge Denise Langford’s portrait, and I thought, ‘That can be me.’ So, I saw myself. And there was a prayer room, and prayer is really important to me as a spiritual woman, and I picked up A Lawyer’s Prayer to St. Thomas More, and now I say that before my exams.”
In her role as a police officer, Madahah was part of a pilot program with the Detroit Wayne Integrated Health Network in which she worked on the front lines to deescalate crisis situations involving people on the margins of society. She still gets calls to the Google voice number she gave out while part of the program. “I’ll have people call and say, ‘You helped my brother out, and you were able to calm him down. Can you talk to him?’ When you have this connection to people, it’s not something you turn off—not for me, anyway.”
I’LL HAVE PEOPLE CALL AND SAY, “YOU HELPED MY BROTHER OUT, AND YOU WERE ABLE TO CALM HIM DOWN. CAN YOU TALK TO HIM?” WHEN YOU HAVE THIS CONNECTION TO PEOPLE, IT’S NOT SOMETHING YOU TURN OFF— NOT FOR ME, ANYWAY.
Madahah’s honors are many, from the Detroit Police Department’s Woman of the Year to the Henry H. Torrent Award for Black Student Excellence at Detroit Mercy. She also partnered with another first-year student to win the Transnational Law Moot competition, and she plans on defending the title.
“I love litigation,” she says. “It’s really important to me. I also see myself consulting and, within the next six months, I will be establishing my own private investigation firm. So, I don’t want to put myself in a box, and I don’t know what opportunities will come, but I know that eventually I do want to sit on the bench. That is one-hundred-percent a goal.”
Fr. Nate Romano, SJ
For Fr. Nate Romano, SJ, becoming a lawyer helped him become a Jesuit. After graduating from Marquette University, he went on to receive a law degree at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. But in his first year practicing, he felt called to join the Society of Jesus. After being ordained in 2018, he returned to Marquette, where for the past year he has served as Assistant Director of Campus Ministry for Liturgical Programs and Adjunct Professor of Law.
“My focus has been teaching as a ministry,” Fr. Romano says. “In teaching at the law school, the question becomes, ‘How do I form my students to be healthy and holy lawyers, whatever their religious, spiritual or cultural backgrounds may be? In the context of legal ethics, it’s about not only teaching what the rules are, but teaching how to do discernment. You give them the tools that are appropriate in a professional setting to help them think through, ‘What is the good to which I am being called?’”
While Fr. Romano’s campus ministry audience consists primarily of undergraduates, law school students also reach out to him. “I’ve had some come to me and say, ‘I’m encountering various ethical and moral dilemmas, and how do I reconcile being Christian, being Catholic, with this situation that I see in the law?’”
The similarities between the priesthood and the legal profession are what drew him to law in the first place. “There is a sort of secular priesthood around the law in that we work to improve people’s lives in structural, systemic ways.” And then practicing law made him want to become a priest. His memories of Marquette convinced him he was making the right choice.
“It really was that ministry of the Society manifested for me at Marquette that came back to me, and I was able to say, ‘That’s the kind of person I want to be. That’s the life I want to live—the life I saw those guys living at Marquette.”
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Photo: Steve Donisch