Shielding the Carer: Understanding and Overcoming Secondary Trauma in Legal Work

Originally presented:  February 7, 2025     |     Course length:  1.0 hour

This course is designed to educate attorneys about secondary traumatic stress and how it can adversely affect the attorney. It is based upon the understanding that working with traumatized individuals is part of many attorneys’ professional practices. Indeed, many of us spend considerable time with victims of trauma, either learning their stories in person or through secondary sources like reports, photographs, recordings, interviews with others and through pretrial and trial testimony. These interactions can take a significant emotional toll on the professional, particularly with repeated exposure over time.

This presentation will explain what secondary trauma is, explain other conditions including burnout, compassion fatigue, depression, anxiety and substance use disorder that can be the result of the stress we experience in repeatedly working with people’s traumatic experiences. The purpose of this program is to assist attorneys in recognizing their exposure to other’s trauma and how that exposure can harm their ability to fulfill their obligations as attorneys. Finally, the presentation will give strategies for the individual and the institution to better equip themselves to handle the effects of working with this vulnerable population, in other words, how to employ strategies to “shield the carer” from the occupational hazard of working with other individual’s trauma. This includes consultation with LCL, EAPs and other resources that assist attorneys and their staff with these complicated issues.

– Sarah MacGillis; Lawyers Concerned for Lawyers