Chicago Area OCAN Luncheon

Friday, July 25, 2025, 11 am

Hyatt Regency O'Hare Chicago

9300 W Bryn Mawr Ave, Rosemont, IL 60018

All Orthodox attorneys in Chicagoland are invited! Come meet other attorneys from Chicago and around the country.

Although the luncheon is being held in conjunction with the 2025 Antiochian Archdiocese Convention, you do not need to attend the convention to join the lunch. The discounted cost of $20 per person is being subsidized courtesy of a generous OCAN sponsor. 

Get your tickets now at the link below!

Thoughts from the Bench:

A "Fireside Chat" with Three Orthodox Judges

Tuesday, May 20, 2025

Ever wonder what life and work is like on the other side of the bench? Join us for an informative discussion among three distinguished Orthodox judges at different stages of their judicial careers.  Among the topics to be addressed are:

• What are some of the biggest joys and challenges of serving as a judge?
• How does one prepare to become a judge?
• How does being a person of faith affect being a judge?
• Advice for litigators from the perspective of a judge
• Advice for anyone interested in becoming a judge

Panel of Judges:

Honorable Nada Kosanovich Sizemore

Connecticut Superior Court (retired)

Honorable Steven Counelis

Superior Court of the State of California, County of Riverside

Honorable Rose Marie Karadsheh Preddy 

Seventh Judicial Circuit Court of Florida

Thoughts on Humility

for Orthodox Christian Attorneys

Speaker: Lory Barsdate Easton

Thursday, April 10, 2025

In the Lenten prayer of St. Ephrem the Syrian, we ask the Lord to give us the spirit of humility. What is humility, and what does it mean to be humble as a lawyer? This webinar will discuss the virtue of humility, touching on Orthodox teachings and recent psychological research, and will explore challenges for lawyers seeking to grow closer to Christ through humility.

We will discuss some of the specific pitfalls for lawyers, including:

• the competitive and adversarial aspects of the profession,
• the encouragement to be self-promoting as "marketing,"
• the temptations of specialized knowledge, prestige, and power, and
• the dangers of stress and burnout

We also will consider some examples of humility in action in legal practice. Entering Holy Week, Orthodox Christians are brought face-to-face with the icon depicting the Extreme Humility of Christ. Join us before Lent ends to consider how our Lord Himself tolerated shame and injustice – to the grave – and what that means for us as lawyers.

Orthodox Christians and

the Rights Revolution in America

with Rev. Dr. Anthony Roeber

Thursday, February 27, 2025

Webinar Recording

So much of American law and policy is predicated on the concept of “rights,” derived primarily from western thought. Does our Orthodox tradition have anything to contribute to the American conversation on this topic?  

Fr. Anthony’s presentation will provide an overview of the objective and content of his book, Orthodox Christians and the Rights Revolution in America. His book engages the difficult question of how Eastern Orthodox people have selectively used some modern notions of rights but rejected other aspects of modern secular liberal thought. At the same time, it alerts the Orthodox to their inherited notions of “rights,” sometimes referred to as “prerogatives,” “honors,” “privileges,” and so on that remain contested both among hierarchs and in controversies between clergy and laity that have at times resulted in lawsuits in secular courts. Fr. Anthony attempts to provide a way to distinguish various kinds of rights claims before engaging the Orthodox chronological engagement with internal and external rights claims in North America. He then grounds these issues in the global context of Orthodox debates over rights and compares Orthodox North American assessments with Catholic and Protestant approaches.

Speaker: The Rev. Dr. A. G. Roeber, Emeritus Professor of Early Modern History and Religious Studies, Penn State University, is currently Professor of Church History, St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary. Born in Paonia, Colorado, he began his graduate work at the University of Denver and completed his Ph.D. at Brown University. He has taught at various universities in North America and in Germany. His  Palatines, Liberty, and Property was the 1993 co-winner of the American Historical Association’s John H. Dunning Prize for the best book on any aspect of American history in a two-year period. He is a past president of the Orthodox Theological Society in America and most recently Co-author of  Changing Churches (2012); co-editor, Oxford Handbook of Early Modern Theology (2016) author, Mixed Marriages: An Orthodox History (2018); editor, Human v. Religious Rights? (2020), and author, Orthodox Christians and the Rights Revolution (2024).