Shielding the Carer: Understanding and Managing Secondary Trauma in the Legal Profession

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. 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.