Lawyers aren't alone in facing difficult, stressful, and even dangerous situations in their careers.

So how do lawyers compare to other professionals with similar risks of developing trauma-related difficulties?

In their 2017 article, “The Law Is Not As Blind as It Seems: Relative Rates of Vicarious Trauma among Lawyers and Mental Health Professionals,” psychologists Grace Maguire and Mitchell Byrne make the case that lawyers suffer greater rates of vicarious trauma, depression, anxiety, and stress than mental health professionals – independent of personality characteristics associated with resilience and vulnerability.

Why? Maguire and Byrne say that, given high rates of exposure to others’ trauma in both professions, lawyers are more vulnerable because of the organizational and institutional differences in their education, training, and work conditions in comparison with those of mental health professionals.

Lawyers’ Emotional Labor

Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve had deep conversations with State Bar members about the emotional labor required of them as they do the work of lawyering.

Emotional labor – often taken for granted in the practice of law – shows up in myriad ways. It shows up especially when you must:

• calm distressed clients to keep them on track;

• keep yourself calm in the face of adversarial, hostile, uncivil, and even physically threatening encounters in the line of work; and

• evoke empathy in those in positions of decision making.

Evoking empathy, often used when making a case to a judge or jury, is a very sophisticated emotional task that requires:

• attunement to your clients;

• good self-management;

• skillful use of affective presentation; and

• constantly “reading” a room of jury members, judges, magistrates, and others.

And these are situations that are not uncommon in the practice of law.

What Provokes PTSD

After reading the article, I remembered something I learned years ago in a social work lecture at U.W. Madison.

Most of the time, humans can process difficult, startling, or frightening experiences without long-term difficulty. However, when we experience a situation that includes three specific elements, we are more likely to experience post-traumatic stress disorder afterward. Those elements are when:

• the victim or target knows perpetrator of the offense;

• the perpetrator acts (or is believed to be acting) with intention to harm the victim or target; and

• the person being abused, degraded, shamed, or bullied cannot exit the situation – or believes they cannot.

Considering lawyers’ high rates of vicarious trauma, anxiety, depression, and stress, I wonder about the situations in which they find themselves experiencing and enduring these circumstances. Several attorneys have shared with me scenarios in which they have been cornered and physically threatened – situations that meet the criteria for direct PTSD vulnerability. And there’s nothing vicarious about it.

It is not much of a stretch to imagine an attorney in court, who is being treated rudely by a another legal professional (a known person) whose intent is hostile and harming, and who cannot exit the situation out of duty to their client. Theoretically, of course, a lawyer could leave the courtroom, but to do so would likely constitute abandoning a client, risking allegations of contempt, and blowing up their career.

Hence, the feeling of being trapped in a double bind: enduring the maltreatment on the one side and abandoning a client and your career on the other. Such situations are setups for direct PTSD symptoms: hypervigilance, anger, irritability, sleep disturbance, anxiety, avoidance, substance use, and suicidal thoughts and impulses.

Practical Steps to Lessen Your PTSD and Vicarious Trauma

What can lawyers take from the mental health professionals’ toolkit to reduce your rates of PTSD and vicarious trauma?

Here are some ideas:

• Accept that trauma and its fallout are indeed part of the professional risk of the gig and be prepared to get treatment for it after a serious event or a long haul through chronic stress – that’s what mental health professionals do.

• Recognize that trauma can also look like moral injury: the feeling that you’re being required to participate in something that violates your moral code for the sake of another obligation or to keep your job.

• Know your own limits and your own personal signs that you are “over your limit” in terms of stress.

• Practice setting boundaries and protecting them, especially related to time and work.

• Recognize that the answer to stress, shame, anxiety, and fear is not always “work harder.”

• Regard your career as a marathon, not a sprint. Train, prepare, and pace yourself accordingly, with the help of a good coach or two and some supportive teammates.

• Focus on what you have control or influence over and the situations in which you can exercise choice.

• Recognize that while you prioritize your client, you are as equally deserving of respect, dignity, and relief as they are – no more, no less.

Conclusion

As lawyers serving your clients, you face circumstances that can result in your own direct and indirect trauma. This is nothing new – such circumstances have always been a part of the practice of law. In acknowledging this can happen to you, you can take steps to mitigate the impact it has on your personal life and career.

Advocating for structural changes while taking the best care possible of yourself supports the possibility of a long, successful, and rewarding career.

This article was originally published in the The Lawyer's Journey blog of the State Bar of Wisconsin Lawyers Assistance Program (WisLAP). WisLAP offers confidential support, consultations, and education related to mental health and wellness for lawyers.