Legal Work Is Trauma Work

• Citation: Vol. 49 No. 4
• Publication year: 2024
• Year: 2024

Legal Work Is Trauma Work Vol. 49 No. 4 Pg. 18 Vermont Bar Journal January 2024

by Cassie Gillespie, LICSW

They told me I would be impacted, but they didn't tell me what to do...

We are Impacted People Caring for Impacted People

If you work a typical 40-hour week, you will spend roughly 2000 hours at work this year. Many attorneys will work even more. You may leave work tired and depleted, and head directly into the 'second shift' of your personal life. Time for grocery shopping, running errands, picking up the kids, making dinner, and maybe squeezing in a show before heading to bed and tackling it all over again the next day.

Whatever the particulars of your work-week, many working people exhaust a large percentage of their temporal, emotional, and cognitive resources at work. It is not news at this point that Americans are suffering from high levels of workplace stress and burnout. This is especially true for those who also hold marginalized identities and are vulnerable to structural and intersectional oppression.^[1][2][3] However, there is also a distinct toll that working in fields that support individuals experiencing trauma takes on professionals such as lawyers, medical professionals, first responders, and social workers. While there are many terms used to describe this toll, like secondary or vicarious trauma, I prefer to use the term, "Trauma Exposure Response," coined by Laura van Dernoot Lipsky.^[4] In our 2021 podcast on Trauma Stewardship, van Dernoot Lipsky explained that she uses this term because it is clear and straightforward; there was trauma, you were exposed, and now there is a response.^[5]

Trauma Exposure Response is defined by van Dernoot Lipsky as "the transformation that takes place within us as a result of exposure to the suffering of other living beings or the planet." It includes signs and symptoms including:

• Grandiosity,

• Strained relationships,

• Chronic exhaustion

• Guilt

• A sense of hopelessness

• Hypervigilance

• Anger and cynicism

• Physical ailments and symptoms (headaches, trouble sleeping, etc.) &

• Numbing and addictions.^[6]

Compared to other professions, attorneys and legal staff are uniquely at risk for trauma exposure response.^[7][8] And while attorneys are increasingly being warned about trauma exposure response, indeed most of attorneys I work with were warned as early as law school, there is seldom a solution focused discussion about what to do to prevent or heal this exposure. Attorneys are told that they are at increased risk of substance use disorder, increased rates of mental health diagnoses such as anxiety and depression, and even increased rates of suicidality. Most have been on the receiving end of some version of a 'Watch out! This is out there' kind of speech, either in law school or during a wellness CLE. However, there is a notable gap when it comes to discussing concrete strategies and steps that can be taken to address trauma exposure response.

Legal Work is Trauma...