Lawyers teetering on the edge … Legal aid commissions and other agencies have been slow to grapple with traumatised lawyers handling child sexual assault cases … The mental wreckage is more widespread that we like to think … Sara Tomevska reports on a workplace war zone
Their health problems have not always been met with proper medical care, more likely a rapid transfer to another area of practise or the broom cupboard.
In October last year the SBS program Insight looked at the gruelling reality of the daily work of criminal lawyers. One of them told the audience that she was so traumatised she left the profession and went back to a job in advertising. A case of too much reality forcing her to flee to fantasy.
Quite apart from the distressing evidence in criminal trials, in some grotesque cases lawyers also are physically abused and threatened by an accused or their family.
And it’s not only prosecutors and defence lawyers who are in the line of fire, judges and magistrates too are discovering the effects on their mental health.
Magistrate David Heilpern’s Tristan Jepson lecture, delivered a few weeks after Insight, told of the traumatic consequences for judicial officers and their staff who are repeatedly exposed to the details of sexual assault cases.
Reports from adversely affected lawyers indicate that legal aid commissions and other government agencies have been slow to develop proper levels of support, although now the extent of the problem is so unavoidable that some new policies have been implemented.
For lawyers, the statistics are particularly galling. According to a study by the Brain and Mind Research Institute, 46.9% of law students, 55.7% of solicitors and 52.5% of barristers reported that they had experienced depression.
See also the report from the WA Law Society on psychological distress and depression in the legal profession.
Anne Mainsbridge, a lawyer with STARTTS – the Service for the Treatment and Rehabilitation of Torture and Trauma Survivors – says lawyers have their heads in the sand when it comes to mental health issues, particularly trauma.
“Trauma and anxiety are real and almost inevitable parts of the profession, unfortunately it’s still treated as a weakness.”
She adds there are risks associated with working alongside highly traumatised clients, most of whom at STARTTS are refugees having spent time in detention centres.
“In dealing with refugees … some of the things they have experienced are just unspeakable. And, it’s not like I meet with them once and take a statement. We meet four or five times … you become completely immersed in their story.”
To that end, staff at STARTTS receive clinical supervision on a weekly basis in order to assist them in dealing with the emotional and mental toll of their work.
Mainsbridge has been at the organisation for about seven years and says she wouldn’t have survived a year in the job without counselling sessions.
The Law Society of NSW, offers its members links to external organisations, such as Lifeline for Lawyers and BeyondBlue, as well as the lawyers’ assistance program, which provides 24/7, free, confidential phone counselling with the co-ordinator, long-standing solicitor Charles Xuereb, who can refer people to specialist outposts.
The NSW bar provides advice and counselling to NSW barristers through BarCare.
The NSW Legal Aid Commission does much the same, referring its traumatised lawyers to outside specialist mental health services.
The tendency, however, has been to move trial lawyers to other areas where they really don’t want to work, rather than helping them apply their skills and experience in a suitable area that doesn’t deepen the trauma.
Carol Scherret worked in the NSW Health Department’s mental health division, until she was “exposed” within her organisation as suicidal. She was told the department did not have the resources to deal with her case.
Similarly, a long-time lawyer at Legal Aid who experienced PTSD and depression, rather than being offered a mutually acceptable solution, was relegated to a section that had nothing to do with her skill set. Legal Aid seemingly couldn’t, or wouldn’t, organise an appropriate replacement position for her.
“Compassionate transfer” seems to be a preferred public sector option for dealing with damaged employees. Frequently, we hear it’s a case of “buck-up” and move along.
Well-being seminars and group debrief sessions, while all very well, are not effective solutions.
The study published by the Brain and Mind Institute noted that a major cause of lawyer depression is the “culture of competitiveness” and associated with it is the fear many lawyers have of being exposed as anything other than bulletproof human-bots.
One Legal Aid lawyer told us that while the organisation outwardly spruiks a commitment to wellbeing and mental health, on the inside people think of stress and trauma as “a little bit of bullshit”.
Anne Mainsbridge says “judicial stress” and vicarious trauma have follow-on effects that extend beyond the courtroom.
“You may start to over-identify with your clients and become somewhat of a rescuer, or else start to dissociate completely and become distant from your family and friends.”
Examples of distress abound. Lawyer and law tutor Dr Jon Yaakov Gorr says he knows a young woman in her mid-20s working as a paralegal in a Brisbane law firm who is expected to bill seven chargeable hours a day. She is charged out at $250 an hour, while she is being paid approximately one-seventh of that amount.
Gorr says the pressure she is under is causing damage to her mental health. Ironically, she is part of the workers comp team, dealing with the concept of the safe workplace.
He adds:
“We seem to allow organisations to build business models based on the causation of mental harm. It is at least reckless, if not intentional, to impose such high-pressure workloads.”
It seems we’re well overdue for health and safety audits on workplaces that mess with lawyers’ heads.