Transcript

Leigh de la Reza: Vicarious trauma is work related exposure to victims of trauma and violence. And what happens is it changes the professional over time. So, by listening to somebody else’s trauma, you’re picking it up as well.

Voiceover: You’re listening to the Texas Family Law Insiders podcast, your source for the latest news and trends in family law in the state of Texas. Now, here’s your host attorney Holly Draper.

Holly Draper: Today we’re excited to welcome Leigh de la Reza is our guest on the Texas Family Law Insiders podcast. Leigh is a partner at the law firm of Noelke Maples St Leger Bryant LLP in Austin, Texas. She is board certified in family law, is a member of the Texas Academy of Family Law Specialists and is a fellow of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers. She’s also a member of the Family Law Council, the State Bar of Texas and a past president of the Austin Bar Association Family Law Section. In her free time, Leigh is a Girl Scout leader for her twin daughters’ troop and enjoy sailing, writing and painting. Thank you so much for joining us today.

Leigh: Thank you for having me.

Holly: So why don’t start by just telling us a little bit about yourself.

Leigh: So I’ve been a lawyer for 16 years in Austin, Texas, I practice some in the surrounding counties as well. And I practice only family law. I started off in juvenile law, but I’ve been in family law for about 14 years now.

Holly: So how would you describe your current practice?

Leigh: I represent people in divorce, child custody, I handle a lot of high conflict child custody cases, we do high asset divorces as well. Of course, adoptions, post marital, premarital agreements. Pretty much anything that falls under the umbrella of family law. So working with people on on a day to day basis.

Holly: And I can tell from looking at your bio, on your website, that you have a little bit of a niche with working with EMS, fire departments, police officers, emergency responders, that type of thing. Tell us a little bit about what that niche is like.

Leigh: So my husband is assistant chief in the Austin Fire Department, and he’s been in the fire department for going on 20 years now. As a result, I’ve gotten to know a lot of firefighters, a lot of police, EMS. He developed a bagpipe band as well. So we have that is as well. So um, so as a result, I got to know a lot of them, know how their pensions work. And, and actually, my relationship with with my husband and his being in the fire department is really what led me to start looking into vicarious trauma. So just kind of segue into that.

In the Austin fire department, they have a thing called a peer support team. And a peer support team is a group of firefighters within the department who will either reach out to the firefighter or the firefighter will reach out to them when they’ve gone on a bad call. Because firefighters recognize that sometimes you go on something that is very traumatic to work on, right, maybe it’s a death of a child, or something along those lines. And as a result of being in the peer support team, he was constantly going to different conferences on vicarious trauma. So I started hearing bits and pieces. It’s not something that we talk about in law. So one day I came home from work and I said, oh, did you hear about this thing that’s been in the news? There was a tragic incident in which a father murdered his daughter and then murdered himself. And it was all over the news.

And and I knew some of the family law attorneys who had been working on that case. And my husband said no, I hadn’t heard of that. He immediately jumps up, gets on his computer and start looking at who were the firefighters that responded to the call. Reached out to them? Are they okay, offering them different help. Directing them to good services. Because he knows that’s a really traumatic call to go on. Well, the next day, I see one of the attorneys who had been on the case, and he’s in court working on his next case. And I thought where where is our peer support? And I know as a family law attorney, how intimately involved you are in your cases. How you know everything about their children, you know, I mean, we’ve read text messages, we’ve looked at records, we know everything about a family, and how connected you are to that.

And here are these attorneys on both sides of the case who were so involved in it, the judge as well, and where’s the help and support that they’re getting? So I started looking at vicarious trauma for lawyers. And what was interesting when I started doing the research was that there’s a ton of research on vicarious trauma for lawyers, and what is happening to lawyers who are working on these cases. And then I was a little bit angry because I thought, why are we not hearing about this? Why is nobody presenting to us these different resiliency training that they have for police and EMS and therapist. FEMA has mandatory training before they send people out into the field.

And yet every day, we are faced with working with people that have have very traumatic incidences that happen in their lives. And we’re picking up all of that. And instead, what you usually hear is, all lawyers have high rates of alcoholism, and all they have high divorce rates, and there’s a lot of suicide, as if it’s a problem of the lawyer, and not a problem of the job. And so, so I became very passionate about being bringing awareness to what is actually happening, what we can do to counter those effects, and how you can lead like just a happier, more well rounded life, enjoy practicing family law, and not let it destroy you in the process.

Holly: Yeah, I think, as family lawyers, at least I know, for me coming up as a family lawyer over the years, you can be a little bit naive about what can happen, and all these people whose lives you’re dealing with on a daily basis. And you know, you hear about it on the news that oh, some somebody got served with divorce papers and killed the other person. Or people who committed suicide after they had been served with divorce papers or something like that. And until you, it happens to you, or until it happens to somebody that you know, you can get kind of into a trap of that, that can never happen to me. But I do think even with me, those are extreme examples, obviously. But probably in all of our cases, or a lot of our cases that aren’t the super amicable ones. We deal with these kinds of issues.

Leigh: Yes, absolutely. And so, the first thing that I wanted to point out was that it’s not stress. Everybody has stress, all lawyers experience stress, and there’s both good stress that’s motivating you, and there’s distress that, you know, you’re you’re feeling a lot of trouble about. But vicarious trauma is really different. Lawyers who are criminal attorneys, family law attorneys, people that are working with people listening to trauma. So vicarious trauma is work related exposure to victims of trauma and violence. And what happens is it changes the professional over time. So by listening to somebody else’s trauma, you’re picking it up as well. In fact, the DSM, the American Psychiatric Association revised the PTSD criteria of the DSM five, an added repeated or extreme indirect exposure to aversive details of traumatic events as a qualifying stressor to meet the criteria for diagnosis of PTSD. So secondary exposure to trauma is really a job related risk of practicing family law.

The terminology of vicarious trauma first came about from McCann and Perlman back in the 90s. And they were looking at therapists, and what was happening to therapists who were listening to traumatic events. And what they found was that the repeated exposure created profound changes in the core aspects of the therapist’s self. So it changes who you are. And the following years, they started looking at other professions. So in 2003 Levin and Greisberg, studied lawyer specifically. And they saw that lawyers suffered significantly higher rates of secondary traumatic stress and burnout compared with mental health providers and social service workers who are working with the exact same clients. And that was really profound, you know, so you’re working with the same people, but the lawyers are picking up so much more of that stress. And why are they picking it up?

You know, part of it is possibly training, but also just the nature of what our jobs entail. Then a 2011, Levin and his colleagues found a significantly higher rates of PTSD symptoms and attorneys than their administrative staff. They did some follow up studies. And they found that lawyers that had were continually exposed to indirect trauma led to the lawyers withdrawing, reducing their effectiveness of work hours over time. And then in 2019, there was another study done on 478 attorneys and they found significant increases of PTSD symptoms in the attorneys who are working with work related trauma. So if you think about vicarious trauma, because you’re picking up some like PTSD symptoms, and you know, what does that mean to you as a person is really pretty significant.

Holly: So what are some of those PTSD symptoms that attorneys could look for and know if they are starting to suffer from this.

Leigh: So for, if you’re really looking at symptoms of vicarious trauma specifically, and those symptoms can be physical, they can be emotional and they can be behavioral. So some of the physical symptoms are going to be like fatigue, poor sleep, like you’re waking up in the middle of the night, you’re thinking about your client and times when you’re not at work. You’re overly stressed about particular cases where it’s keeping you up at night, right? That’s pretty common, and it’s an attorney’s. Headaches. frequent headaches are also some physical symptoms.

Emotional symptoms can be anxiety, irritability, depression, feelings of hopelessness, anger outburst. I mean, I think we’ve all seen that at least from opposing counsel. Then there’s some behavioral manifestations too, like cynicism, aggression, substance abuse, poor job performance, attorneys that just don’t want to work anymore, deterioration of their interpersonal relationships. Those are all symptoms, that somebody is picking up a lot of vicarious trauma.

Holly: I think one of the fine lines that we walk as family lawyers, which is probably the same thing for therapists or emergency responders or doctors, probably others, too, is that line between getting too emotionally invested in too much, and not caring at all. And so you want to walk the line where you care and are compassionate, but you can’t go too far to that side, or you can’t handle it.

Leigh: Absolutely. And I think it’s particularly difficult for attorneys. So something that I try to remember really came actually came from my husband who said, you know, think of it as you didn’t create the accident, you’re just going to the scene. And maybe the car is totaled, and you can’t fix that, but you’re just doing what you can to help. Having that perspective can be helpful. It’s really hard for attorneys, because we’re expected to go in and fix problems. And we really have so much more of a connection to what is happening to the client and trying to change the direction of whatever has occurred in a way that’s more significant. Not necessarily significant, but it’s more intense, and I think even therapists.

So therapists are able to have more, a wider boundary. And where that line is, can be really hard for attorneys, especially for young attorneys. Now, what you’ll notice is that people that have been in family law for a really long time, they’ve developed good sets of boundaries, if they’ve stayed in it for long enough. You know, to where you give advice, but you still maintain, okay, that’s your choices. These are your options. And, you know, when they’re not answering calls in the middle of the night, and they’re not doing things outside of what they’re doing in their legal practice, right.

So one of the studies, for instance, was talking about how lawyers that were working with domestic violence clients, we’re often doing things outside of the practice of law, like trying to help them find housing, trying to help them get on different types of government assistance programs. Whereas the therapist, we’re just working on therapy with them, right. And so when you’re going into these other areas, you’re really taking on like the full responsibility for the person. And that’s not necessarily good for the person, but it’s definitely going to cause you to pick up a lot of vicarious trauma from them.

Holly: And I think we can take on a lot of responsibility, too, because especially you’d have DD situations or allegations related to abuse of a child, where, you know, I can recall the cases that have kept me up at night are the ones where I’ve got a hearing, parent has been accused of abusing a child, and I’m trying to get that parent no access or supervised access, and if I lose, and it’s true that that parent has been abusing the child, then that’s on me. So that’s where I really struggle with that line.

Leigh: Yeah, yeah. And, and so in that moment, recognizing, okay, I’m in a situation where I’m likely to pick up a lot of vicarious trauma in this case, and just being consciously aware that that is going to happen, can help already create some resiliency, right? And then what you want to do are some things like cognitive restructuring, where you basically take a situation that is really bad and you think about, okay, so I am helping this person stand up for themselves. I am helping them get the kind of help that maybe they’ve never had before. I’m helping them get some skills that can help them regardless of what happens, right. And so you cognitively restructure the situation.

And you can also build resiliency in your client, by helping them do some cognitive restructuring. Like, you know, I’ve heard attornies say things like, tell clients, every time you stand up to a bully, you’re showing that bully that you’re standing up to them, and you’re not just going to take it. And whether you win or lose, you have stood up for yourself. Right. So that’s cognitive restructuring. And so also setting certain boundaries in your mind of like, I’m doing the very best that I can do. But I’m not the judge. And I don’t have complete control over everything that happens. I don’t have control over this person’s life journey. I’m going to the scene of the accident, I didn’t create the accident, I’m gonna do everything I can to help. And to save them, but if I can’t, I can’t. And that and just setting those boundaries for yourself emotionally. And then knowing, I’m working on this really high conflict, domestic violence case. After this, I’m going to need to do some self care. I’m going to need to connect back to my worldview, whether it’s spirituality, whether you know, whatever who it is that you are, so that you don’t lose yourself in the process.

So what happens is that like, as lawyers, we are so good at what we do, and we work so hard, like, you know, things about domestic violence, that people that are not family law attorneys don’t know, right? You know, things about mental health issues that people outside of our field, don’t know. But over time, if you don’t practice ways of building resiliency, and your worldview narrows. And then you begin to see everything through that lens, right. And that’s when it starts to change the person. Changes your your worldview, your cognitive schemas, and that’s what you want to try to prevent. And then in cases like that, if you do lose, it can be so devastating. And then, you know, without having ways of like, putting it in perspective.

Perspective is really hard when you’re a new attorney. But when you’ve been in practice for a long time, it becomes easier because you begin to see the big picture in certain cases. Like, sometimes you lose a case and something happens where it’s fine in the end, you know. In all sorts of situations, like I’ve seen cases, I’ve had cases where they were fighting over 50-50. And it was, you know, to the death, and then the dad got it, and then he moved away the next year, you know. And that’s like a simple situation. But lots of different things can change. And so keeping that perspective too can can kind of help.

Holly: You’ve mentioned a few times about building resiliency. What tips would you have for young lawyers to get into family law to start doing that early and help them get on the right path to a long happy, successful career in family law?

Leigh: Well, the first thing is you need to understand that you are being exposed to trauma, right. And that can help, but also developing peer support so that you can talk with other people. We know that young attorneys will experience vicarious trauma at significantly higher rates than than attorneys that have been in the practice for longer. We know that things like being overworked is a is a real problem. Taking cases that are way above their skill level is a problem. That’s really hard in family law, because it’s hard to know sometimes when you get a case, it’s like Pandora’s box, like what all is going to come out right you don’t always know.

So developing a community where you can work with peers, you can work with people that are older than you, those people will help give you perspective, they might be able to step in if something is way outside of your skill level. And there are ways that young attorneys can do that like by joining their local bar association, joining the Family Law Section, reaching out to other people. There’s even some CLEs that work with like, there’s like masters of family law and stuff like that, where you can kind of connect with older attorneys. And all of that will really help.

Holly: Yeah, I’ve actually started a couple of attorney mom’s groups. And I kind of started them with the idea that there are very few people in the world that can relate to the stresses and specific issues going on in my life. And other attorney moms generally can relate to that. So I think finding whatever stage you’re in, whether it’s you know, you’re in the Young Lawyers Association, or the Family Law Section of your local Bar, whatever, wherever you can plug in and connect with people who are similarly situated, but that also have more experience than you, I think is a great way to help.

Leigh: Yeah, I mean, the thing with peer support is that even by just talking to another family lawyer and saying, like with the moms group, for instance, oh, I had this horrible domestic violence case that I lost, and I feel really awful. And then having other people say, hey, I’ve been there, I understand that’s happened to me, just having that interaction. We know that will help prevent people from having further like worse psychological problems later. Like just talking about it with somebody who understands. And so it’s good to have other lawyers that get it. Sometimes it’s hard to talk about with a spouse or friend who doesn’t practice family law, because it’s hard for people outside of the field to really understand what family lawyers go through.

Holly: So for those lawyers who are more experienced, who maybe have not dealt with this so well, and they aren’t in a great place, they’re getting burned out, they’re super stressed out with their career choices, what advice would you have for them to help kind of undo some of that damage?

Leigh: So what happens is that if you don’t develop good adaptive and resiliency skills, you will develop maladaptive ways of coping right. Maladaptive ways of coping, or like drinking too much and becoming, having substance abuse problems, right. That’s what happens, like you start finding ways to adapt in some way. And it will lead to burnout where people don’t want to practice anymore. And we see that in family law a lot. Like you hear about people saying, I just want to get out, I don’t want to practice family law anymore. Other attorneys will say things like I’d do anything but family law.

So if you were at that point, then you probably need to get some professional help. You need to find your way back to you who you really are. And maybe taking a break from family law would be a good idea. But I think once you’ve gotten to the point where you’re completely burned out, you’re developing worse psychological problems or worse mental health problems, then you need to get help. Now, part of building resiliency with vicarious trauma, one thing that you can do is to have a professional that you talk to you. Therapist often have therapists that they talk to. I think family lawyers tend to be hesitant to talk to a therapist about issues, but it can help.

Holly: So one of the programs I know the State Bar offers TLAP that helps with attorneys that are going through substance abuse or other types of mental health issues like that. I don’t know how much you know about that program. I don’t know a ton about it. But is that something that you would recommend for anyone who reach the point of going there?

Leigh: Sure absolutely. TLAP has great resources for attorneys. And they can connect you to all sorts of other resources that you might need.

Holly: Are there other resources out there within the State Bar within your local Bar to help with this? Or is this an area that somebody needs to be creating more resources to help with?

Leigh: Well, so the American Bar Association has recognized that there is a need for vicarious trauma for lawyers. And, but I have, I personally haven’t seen as much on a state level, when I posed it as a topic for advanced family law. And it really hadn’t been a topic before. TLAP is starting to have some bits and pieces on vicarious trauma, and hopefully, they will pick up and start doing more with it. But but I’m not aware. And maybe I’m wrong, but I’m not aware of anything close to the level that you see in things like with the fire department or the police department, or therapist, you know, in other areas like that, where they really have training on vicarious trauma resiliency.

Holly: So what, if you could advise the state bar or a local bar association on what they should implement to help with this problem, what would you advise them to do?

Leigh: So there’s a number of things that they should do. So one is having education. We need just knowing what the problem is, and that there is a problem really helps. Trauma specific education diminishes the potential of vicarious trauma. And part of that is just being able to recognize, okay, I am way invested in this case, and they’re, you know, I’m picking up a lot of vicarious trauma. Having self assessments, they can have self assessments on their website, there’s a number of different self assessments out there. And directing attorneys, hey, you can take a self assessment and see, where are you at on picking up this vicarious trauma. Setting up peer support would be really helpful.

So I think that we need to have some sort of peer support on a statewide level, because for a couple reasons. So one is it’s really difficult to talk to another attorney in your same area about a case. They may, you don’t want to give away any kind of information about the case, but you also don’t want to appear that you’re with any kind of weakness in front of other attorneys, right. And so and judges particularly have problems with this. Like, there are studies on judges picking up a lot of vicarious trauma and not being able to talk about it. So if we had something on a state level where I could call you, Holly and be like, hey, Holly, this is going on. You’re not in my same area of practice, you wouldn’t know the parties, you wouldn’t ever have the possibility of representing one of the parties. And you know, but you still practice family law, you still deal with the same things that I deal with every day.

So if there were some sort of peer support on a statewide level, that would be extremely helpful. Teaching lawyers, the benefits of self care, and that self care is actually something that you need. You need to heal, is would be also very helpful. So and within self care, kind of structuring, like, you know, you need to eat well, and you need to exercise. And looking at the problems that lawyers are facing from the standpoint of what are the work related problems, instead of looking at things from the standpoint of, do you already have a serious issue? Right, so looking at before it becomes a serious issue. I think I think all of those things would help.

Holly: And also, you mentioned peer support, kind of tying back to what you said about your husband, when he saw the article about the murder and how he reached out to the people who had been involved. Something like that would be great, because, you know, it’s it’s in the news when something really traumatic happens, and to have a way for attorneys to kind of refer somebody say, you know, hey, this, this is the attorney who was representing the husband who just killed the wife and children. Somebody needs to be reaching out to this person and making sure they know that this was not their fault, and what they resources for them to help get through it.

Leigh: Exactly, exactly. So I think there’s a number of things that we could do. And even just looking, phrasing things differently, you know, and working on this. I was looking at different statistics for lawyers, you know, and they say, there’s, you know, like 28% of lawyers have substance abuse problems, and, you know, that sort of thing. But it’s not lawyers, this is we’re just people doing a job. You know? So what is it about our job that is creating this? It’s not that lawyers inherently have problems, it’s that this job is creating problems in people. People that are educated, highly educated, highly motivated. People, they went into an area of the law because they care about people, and they are suffering. So we need to look at why and fix the problems at the source instead of waiting until people have already developed maladaptive behaviors, and are leaving the profession.

Holly: So what advice would you give for somebody like me, for example, I have several young lawyers that work for me in my firm. So for lawyers who hire or manage younger lawyers that are learning family law, what should we be looking out for what should we be offering to our associates to help them on this journey?

Leigh: So there are some things that you can do on a structural level, right. So as a firm, as a practice, being able to have an open door policy and some mentorship with younger attorneys, is helpful. Making sure that they’re not working on cases that are way above their skill level, since we know that that can lead to vicarious trauma. Making sure that people aren’t overworked. Having good policies for being able to take off of work. So I’m in an excellent firm. If I take a vacation, I have partners that cover for me completely, so that I can actually unplug, you know, for the most part and and get away. And realizing that that’s not just having fun taking a vacation, that’s healing.

So being able to have policies where staff can leave, where they’re encouraged to take vacations. They’re encouraged to practice self care, not allowing, like really crazy clients to take over. I think we’ve all had clients where you’re like, okay, you we need to withdraw from this case. It’s too much. Especially for young attorneys. And then just training you can even do in house training on you know, these are these are signs of vicarious trauma that you’re going to deal with. And what does that mean? Young attorneys often have never heard about this. There is a growing movement to have some training within law schools. And so like Yale Law School has stuff on this, but most law schools don’t. So when attorneys get out of law of law school, they don’t often know like, how something is really going to affect them.

Holly: Are there any resources you know, of that attorneys can go to to find out more information about this or to find trainings?

Leigh: Well, so there are a number of different research papers and stuff on specifically lawyers. For training, usually, the training, regardless of who it is, is, has been adapted from those early trainings for therapists. So you can find training, even online, you can find different training materials and stuff like that. As far as other resources, you know, I’m not aware of any other resources. But hopefully, there will be more and more as we bring awareness.

Holly: Yeah, definitely. I mean, this is I’ve been practicing for, gosh, 17 years. I’m one year ahead of you. But this is the first time that I have heard this term.

Leigh: Yeah. And, you know, you look at things that lawyers complain about with other lawyers, right? Like, oh, this lawyer is such a jerk, and they were so aggressive, and or, you know, like this lawyer is acting like they’re married to the person, why are they so invested? When you start looking at vicarious trauma and what that looks like and how it develops, then it makes sense why oh, this person is just not dealing with their case very well, they are picking up all this trauma from their client.

We also know that people who have prior history of trauma, their own personal trauma, it may be benign, maybe they’re not showing any signs of PTSD. But if they then work on a case, it can trigger their own personal trauma, so that they begin showing signs of PTSD that they weren’t showing before. So when you start looking at things like that, from your colleague’s standpoint, from the judge’s standpoint, you know, I find, at least personally, I have a lot more compassion for the people that I’m working with, and realizing that they’re also going through all these things. You know, judges in particular, are exposed to a lot of stuff, and they really need more help.

Holly: So if we have an opposing attorney who’s, you know, just a jerk, and they’re being difficult, and they seem to be very irrational about the case, and we suspect that they’re suffering some sort from some form of vicarious trauma, because of this case, or from something else. Is there anything we can do to help them, to defuse the situation? Or do we just file it away in the back of our head as a reason to maybe give them some grace and go on down the road?

Leigh: Yeah, I mean, that’s probably what I would do, I don’t think it would be helpful to say, hey, you seem like you’re suffering from vicarious trauma. But definitely, you know, you don’t you want to be wary of like, representing somebody that you’re friends with, an or family member, right, because you’re going to be even more invested in that person. But if you see it in another person, I think probably just giving them some grace and trying to keep think, try to, you know, lower the temperature, instead of reacting, right. And maybe keep more things in writing. And, ultimately, you know, it’s a disadvantage to their client, because they have now gone past the level where they can do an intentional caregiving. They are now to the point where they are emotionally invested in what’s happening in the case. And that’s not good. You can’t really do good work that way.

Holly: Right, I think clients think they want their attorney to be emotionally invested. But at the end of the day, it is not the best for anyone.

Leigh: Yeah, I mean, it prevents you from being able to negotiate and it prevents you from being able to see clearly right. So you no longer see the perspective of the other side. And if you can’t see the perspective of the other side, then you’re not going to develop very good cross examination questions. You’re not going to be on the lookout for things that the other side is going to bring up. It’s it’s not going to help it doesn’t help anyone.

Holly: So we’re just about out of time, but one of the things I like to ask everyone on the podcast is if you could give one piece of advice to young lawyers, what would that be?

Leigh: One piece of advice to young lawyers would be to join your local bar associations. Join join, like if you’re a mom, join a mom’s group like you’re talking about as well. You know, connect with other people, but also have friends that are not lawyers and remember who you really are.

Holly: I think that is excellent advice. So where can our listeners go if they want to learn more about you?

Leigh: And well I have a website. It’s Noelke Maples St Leger Bryant and you could look me up online. And you can also find, I wrote a paper for vicarious trauma and lawyers at an advanced family law that’s on Texas bar CLE. You can pull that paper up. You might be able to find it online as well. That has a lot of research in it if you wanted to look at what the underlying research is from different professionals that have been looking at this topic.

Holly: Well that sounds great. So thank you so much for joining us today.

Leigh: Thank you.

Voiceover: That Texas Family Law Insiders podcast is sponsored by the Draper Law firm. We help people navigate divorce and child custody cases and handle family law appellate matters. For more information, visit our website at www.Draperfirm.com