| THE ONTARIO LAWYERS’ ASSISTANCE PROGRAM By: Donald C. Murray, Q.C. “ The awful, disgusting and repugnant things that are bound up inside our clients’ stories in criminal law, family law, and immigration law can carry over to become a source of significant distress in our personal lives.” Aversion is the key. It is the telephone call that you do not want to return, or the appointment that you put off making. It is the not wanting to explain to the client why you do not want to talk about some particularly difficult part of her case. It is seeing a hearing date approaching but not being able to bring yourself to prepare for it. It is suddenly realizing that you have been looking at autopsy pictures for 20 minutes and not being able to remember what you have been looking at, or why. The awful, disgusting and repugnant things that are bound up inside our clients’ stories in criminal law, family law, and immigration law can carry over to become a source of significant distress in our personal lives. We probably became lawyers with the thought that we might be able to do some good for others, might be able to make the lives of others a little more bearable and a little less painful. The difficulty in criminal, family and immigration law is that the legal problems we get asked to solve often contain these horrifying elements that we can’t fix. Our clients have problems and pasts that the law, and their lawyer, will be unable to repair. Whether the criminal charge is murder, or the child apprehension case deals with the sexual destruction of a child, or the refugee claim exposes the wounds of physical torture, these kinds of cases have as their centerpiece an act of significant and continuing emotional harm; often vividly visual. True and complete avoidance is not possible. Although the physical event that created the harm is historic, it is not going to go away. As a result, lawyers who march in to provide effective and useful counsel in these cases can expect to endure significant levels of personal distress as they attempt to manage some beneficial outcome for their clients. In the health care field, this kind of distress has come to be described as vicarious trauma. It has become apparent that lawyers who immerse themselves in even small numbers of these kinds of cases will be infected with a range of unpleasant psychological, and sometimes physical, symptoms. If unacknowledged, or deliberately ignored, these symptoms can lead all the way to the loss of the desire and ability to practice law at all. Avoidance is only one of the instinctive, self-protective symptoms of vicarious trauma. Other job symptoms include things such as:
The lawyer begins to act as though he/she is afraid of the work. As the lawyer’s antagonism toward the job tasks grows, his/her confidence that he/she will eventually be able to provide helping services to the client evaporates. His/her professional sense of competence weakens, and the lawyer may develop a negative attitude towards the case, the client, and the profession. The lawyer then may 1) withdraw from colleagues, 2) become impatient with others and 3) communicate poorly with her client, colleagues, staff, and even family. Absenteeism, tardiness, frequent job changes, and substance abuse often follow. There are strategies that lawyers can employ to escape being overwhelmed by the horrible cases that come to them. Lawyers need to realize that they are affected by these traumatic and disturbing cases, as are social workers, health care workers, paramedics and other crisis workers. Strategies include:
Remember that to look after yourself and be aware of the pitfalls and challenges of the traumatic aspects of law practice will make you a stronger lawyer and a healthier person. About the author Donald C. Murray, Q.C. Don Murray carries on a criminal defence practise throughout Nova Scotia, sits as a Board of Inquiry under provincial Human Rights legislation, and has consulted on justice reform projects internationally through CIDA. He has been a sole practitioner since October 2001. Don was a speaker at the LPAC/OLAP national workshop on vicarious trauma Nov. 2004. CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD A PRINTABLE VERSION OF THIS ARTICLE (MS WORD)
Legal Profession Assistance Conference (LPAC) |Commission on Lawyer Assistance Programs (CoLAP) | Lawyers Assistance Program of British Columbia (BCLAP) | Nova Scotia Lawyers Assistance Program (NSLAP) | Law Society of Upper Canada (LSUC) | The Lawyers Assistance Program (LINK) | The Alberta Lawyers Assistance Program | Lawyers Concerned for Lawyers (Saskatchewan) | The Lawyers Professional Indemnity Company (LawPRO) | Law Practice Consulting |
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