When clients harm us

The topic of lawyer wellbeing has been much discussed for several years. It is a frequent subject of conference sessions and articles.

It traditionally focuses on the effects of workplace problems, for instance caused by bosses, colleagues or law firm culture. We are familiar with the list: stress, excessive workload, difficult workplace relationships, bullying, discrimination, harassment, ineffective supervision, and poor work-life balance. These can in turn lead to substance abuse, severe depression and mental health problems, sometimes leading to self-harm or suicide.

The Law Society has a resource page on the subject. At the start of Mental Health Awareness Week earlier this year, it issued a joint call with LawCare for a change of culture in the profession.

LawCare, the mental wellbeing charity for the legal community, has recently issued a relevant report, ‘Life in the Law 2020/21’.

The Law Society’s Junior Lawyer Division has run a campaign on wellbeing for some years. It undertakes surveys and has issued guidance.

The International Bar Association has similarly undertaken major work. There is an IBA Wellbeing Taskforce, which last year published a report, ‘Mental Wellbeing in the Legal Profession: A Global Study'. At the same time, the IBA has articulated principles for law firms, including: adopting a policy, addressing systemic problems, prioritising mental wellbeing and recognising intersectionalities.

But one thing strikes me about this work. As I have said, it principally focuses on issues which arise within the workplace: from workload, or treatment by bosses and colleagues. It does not deal with problems which might arise from clients, or at any rate I have seen no mention of that aspect.

There are two sorts of problems which can arise from clients. The first is some form of aggression or violence by the client against the lawyer.

The Dutch Bar Association has recently commissioned a survey about the consequences of ill-treatment of a lawyer by a client. (It is in Dutch, but automatic translation makes it available to all.) Questionnaires were sent to 18,000 lawyers and over 1,000 responded.

Amazingly, 50% of the lawyers had experienced at least one incident of aggression from a client over the previous 12 months. For 4 out of 10, this had happened several times. The most common form of aggression was verbal aggression (41%), followed by intimidation (34%), threats (18%) and physical aggression (4%). 21% of those who responded said that they are considering giving up the profession as a result of their experiences.

Although the report found that this kind of aggression occurs in all fields of practice, lawyers who work in insolvency, criminal law, personal injury, and personal and family law are the most likely to experience it. It is also more common in smaller offices than in large ones.

The second form of problem arising from clients is through no fault of their own, but comes from the client’s trauma with which the lawyer has to deal, so-called vicarious trauma. It is slowly being acknowledged that, just as with first responders, a lawyer may be affected by the trauma of the person being helped.

The areas of law involved in this instance include child abuse, physical and sexual assault, murder, and asylum claims. I would argue that medical negligence may be included, too.

There have been small-scale studies in the UK and elsewhere on lawyers who work with asylum seekers. The clients have often been through horrendous experiences, such as torture and dangerous journeys of flight, after which lawyers are brought in. One study showed that just over 50% of asylum lawyers displayed symptoms of partial post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and over a third showed symptoms of full PTSD – merely from assisting their clients. That does not take account of the abuse this group of lawyers has recently been suffering from our government and certain sections of our media as ‘lefty lawyers resisting the people’s will’.

As with the other forms of behaviour which threaten lawyer wellbeing, threats to wellbeing from a client may be dismissed, even by the lawyer personally, as being ‘part of the job’ or ‘something a professional should be expected to deal with’.

I know from my years of being an advice worker, where clients queued up all day to pour out their problems, that there came a point when my mind began to resist, and I yelled back - but only silently in my mind - ‘What about my problems?’ (I left that area of work soon after). Dealing with the victims of serious trauma would clearly leave a much stronger and more harmful imprint on the lawyer.

So my suggestion is that this area of wellbeing deserves more attention. That is not to detract from the important work being done in the currently accepted areas. But clients and their experiences can harm us, too.

Jonathan Goldsmith is Law Society Council member for EU & international, chair of the Law Society’s Policy & Regulatory Affairs Committee and a member of its board. All views expressed are personal and are not made in his capacity as a Law Society Council member, nor on behalf of the Law Society

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