Lawyers, investigators, translators, and support staff working closely with victims of grave human rights abuses are also vulnerable to various forms of secondary, or vicarious, trauma that can impact their ability to be effective advocates for their clients in the legal process. The Institute for Redress and Recovery at Santa Clara University (IRR or Institute) establishes a collaboration between the University and these lawyers and clinicians to provide support services both nationally and internationally. This website also hosts a secondary trauma and the legal process primer and literature review.

This law review article describes how PTSD can affect an asylum seeker's memory and ability to tell consistent and detailed stories of past persecution. This article also offers techniques for interviewing such clients such as asking chaining questions, questions focused on specific segments and questions focused on sensory perceptions.

This practical guide recommends that lawyer’s working with VAWA and U Visa clients help their clients develop their story through a written exercise.

This practical guide provides a list questions for VAWA self-petitioner applications, VAWA cancellation of removal, U Visa cases, and for waivers of inadmissibility. These questions are designed to strengthen an immigration client’s case, and help survivors heal.

This is a transcript of a panel discussion that took place at the Touro Law Center where professors discussed how to address feelings towards clients. This panel discussion stated that neither legal education nor the profession trained lawyers to handle stress, burnout, vicarious trauma and other emotional issues. The panelists provide strategies for lawyers to work with traumatized clients and to make successful referrals to mental health professionals.

This study examined indicators of secondary trauma among attorneys and their administrative support staff in the Wisconsin State Public Defender Office. Attorney participants demonstrated significantly higher levels of posttraumatic
stress disorder symptoms, depression, secondary traumatic stress, burnout, and functional impairment compared with the administrative support staff. These findings suggest a need to support attorneys experiencing these symptoms and to address high workloads as well as the intensity of contact with trauma-exposed clients.

Legal organizations or entities should recognize and acknowledge that compassion fatigue exists. Legal professionals can mitigate compassion fatigue by understanding what it is, talking about it on a regular basis, working on balance in all areas of one’s life and intentionally seeking assistance.

This study clarifies the definitions of Vicarious Traumatization and Secondary Traumatic Stress and uses levels of evidence analysis to synthesize the research findings to date.

Based on the concept that professionalism requires more than zealous advocacy and client self-determination, the author developed the relationship-centered lawyering framework, which draws from theories of human development and social interaction, including family systems and attachment theories.

This article proposes that clinicians adopt the approach of therapeutic jurisprudence, an interdisciplinary movement focusing on the extent to which the law may enhance or inhibit the well being of those who are affected by it. It then outlines a set of guiding principles, including micro-level and macro-level constructs that relate to building effective relationships with students, clients and communities.

This article proposes a new concept called vicarious resilience, based on a qualitative study of the experience of psychotherapists who work with victims and families of victims of political violence.

This article first introduces basic concepts of trauma and secondary trauma. It then offers principles and strategies for understanding and addressing this occupational hazard that may imperil quality representation of children.

This article discusses four potential pitfalls of lawyers who come into contact with trauma: (1) the process of becoming psychologically-minded and its inherent hazards,
including overidentification; (2) the difficulty of balancing neutrality
and involvement; (3) the need to identify and manage transference and
countertransference; and (4) the risk of secondary trauma. This article stresses the need for lawyers to recognize potential hazards and draw on the experience of other therapeutic professionals as they adopt a more explicitly therapeutic framework for dealing with trauma, thereby avoiding the pitfalls.

This article discusses the importance of incorporating trauma education and prevention techniques in the legal education context when law students participate in legal clinics.

This research identifies emotional pressure points pertaining to the asylum seeking client’s narration of her traumatic past persecution in the process of preparing the asylum claim. A typology of psycholegal soft-spots was offered, which includes the potential impact of the work done by the asylum seeking client and her lawyer on both parties.

This book is intended for lawyers and law students interested in developing the competencies to practice law as a healthy, healing profession, one that the lawyer finds fulfilling and rewarding and that is beneficial and healing for the client.

This article explains secondary trauma terms and presents awareness on compassion fatigue, vicarious trauma and burnout. As lawyers and judges, it can be difficult to process the terrible things that you see and hear. Using the example of the jury, it is normal to be affected by trauma. On the other hand, using the example the prosecutor, legal professionals must recognize too their vulnerability to exposure to trauma.

This is an outline of the topics discussed at the Equal Justice Conference in 2010.

This article summarizes a study that assessed the presence of secondary trauma responses and burnout symptoms in attorneys working with criminal defendants and victims of domestic violence and found that attorneys demonstrated significantly higher levels of secondary traumatic stress and burnout, as compared to mental health provides and social service workers. This higher incidence is related to higher caseloads and lack of supervision around trauma. Lack of systemic education regarding the effects of trauma on their clients and themselves and lack of forums for regular opportunities to vent are significant contributors to secondary trauma and burnout.

This is a simple one page article that draws on the findings of other studies to identify secondary trauma as an occupational hazard and recommends awareness, understanding the limitations of the attorney role, providing clients referrals to additional resources and self-care such as avoiding disturbing scenes outside of work and daily exercise.