Comment: It is no secret the legal profession has higher-than-average levels of stress and wellbeing problems. Reports in New Zealand and overseas consistently document the fact that lawyers are an occupational group at one of the highest risks of poor mental health, stress, and burnout.
Earlier this year, the Coroners Court of Victoria in Australia admitted failing to protect staff from vicarious trauma, bullying, and overwork. This admission came after the court service was prosecuted following the suicide of a senior in-house lawyer. Despite several warnings from senior staff and a staff survey identifying problems, little was done to assess wellbeing risks.
My research with forensic psychology researcher Dr Nichola Tyler, from Swinburne University of Technology, and our team suggests we need to be alert to these issues in New Zealand.
It is widely accepted those in caring professions who are exposed to other people’s grief and trauma experience detrimental effects on their own wellbeing. Lawyers working in areas such as criminal and family law therefore have a 'double whammy' of occupational stress and exposure to potentially traumatic material.
Add to this that criminal courts are places steeped in emotion, but where the worst of experiences play out in a purposefully objective manner. Lawyers and judges are criticised for any displays of emotion and this professional expectation overflows to an occupational cultural belief that building scar tissue—a 'thick skin'—is both an aspiration and a necessity.
As part of our research, we spoke to 90 criminal lawyers working in both prosecution and defence. We found criminal lawyers across all the groups we spoke to who struggled to maintain wellbeing in the face of high levels of occupational stress, long hours, exposure to traumatic material, and dealing with others’ emotions.
Despite some changes to policy and practice by law firms and the Law Society, barriers to seeking help remain, and current assistance with stress and burnout is often viewed by lawyers as inadequate.
Lawyers care about their job and the people affected by the cases they are involved in, expressing to us a desire to give back to society and to advocate for those who are vulnerable. They feel responsible for court outcomes: as one lawyer put it, “it feels like you’ve got the whole weight of the world on your shoulders sometimes”.
As well as legal expertise, the job requires a complex set of interpersonal and communication skills, something that can take an emotional toll when dealing with the experiences and emotions of victims, defendants, and witnesses. Popular tropes of the profession do not encourage empathy with lawyers’ struggles.
As we’ve discussed our research outside the legal profession, this lack of empathy has been expressed to us in various—sometimes robust—ways. Yet we should all care about lawyers’ wellbeing because we rely on lawyers to help us navigate legal processes that require accuracy, sound judgment, and creativity: all things that require legal providers to be well-supported in fulfilling their role.
In the criminal courts, we rely on lawyers to help judges and juries make accurate decisions about a person’s guilt and potentially their liberty. Without criminal lawyers, some of the democratic ideals that society relies on would crumble. Criminal lawyers assure the interests of society in addressing harms are represented via the Crown and that each citizen accused of a crime has an adequate defence, something that guilty and innocent people require. Criminal lawyers therefore perform a vital community service and we need them to be high performers. Their wellbeing should matter to us all.
We should also care about any professional group that experiences detrimental wellbeing as a consequence of the job. Lawyers work long, often irregular, hours, making it difficult to maintain personal relationships. Not only this, but many reported their job had changed their world view in ways that limit how they live their life and the decisions they make about their children. As one lawyer said, their job “is just a diet of the most awful things humans can do to each other”.
Both prosecution and defence lawyers who work on sexual violence cases told us they feel the added pressure of getting the ‘right’ result and reported impacts on their ability to be physically intimate with partners, or emotionally open to their families while working on those cases. One lawyer said, “the darkest of the dark is not dinnertime conversation”.
Criminal lawyers also told us their job had made them cautious about their own safety and that of their children. They feel less trusting of others, becoming hypervigilant, turning on lights, and sometimes fearing being home alone.
Despite these impacts, society and the legal profession have long expected lawyers should not show weakness, that a tough exterior is an expected norm. But what we have heard from lawyers is that the tough exterior is in fact a building of scar tissue that does not attend to the wounds underneath or prevent further cuts.
Law firms are starting to enhance their wellbeing provision and the profession itself is encouraging its members to speak out more. Some positive changes are being made. We can all help by trying to have more empathy for those working in our criminal courts to address harm. Our research shows that by helping us, they can be harmed themselves.
It is so important that we help lawyers to continue their role by making it safer and better supported.
This article was originally published on Newsroom.
Yvette Tinsley is a professor of Law and co-director of the Centre for Justice Innovation at Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington.