Self-Care and Law School Clinics

by Margaret Drew

I just returned from the AALS clinical conference. While I could not stay for the entire time, two days was long enough to be refreshed by the energy and commitment of my clinical colleagues. The panel in which I participated focused on self-care. Pepperdine Clinician Brittany Stringfellow Otney organized the panel. In addition to Brittany and myself, Lynnette Parker of Santa Clara Law and Virgil Wiebe of St. Thomas School of Law presented on various aspects of trauma, the effect of trauma and methods for training students to effectively recognize the symptoms of trauma while avoiding or minimizing the impact of vicarious trauma. All of us who work in human rights are exposed to traumatic narratives every day. Whether the exposure is through direct client contact, listening to students’ case summaries or reading cases, in some part of our humanity we have an emotional reaction. Our triumphs, big and small, bring us joy. Experiencing a broad range of emotions is helpful. When we still experience happiness as well as sadness, we are living the human experience. But do we recognize when we are experiencing worry, sadness and negativity in the absence of joy. I must assume that all human rights workers have experienced times of sadness and exhaustion, if not extended times of sadness and exhaustion. Without those experiences we cannot learn prevention. Through our learning to manage our work within appropriate boundaries, we can assist our students in learning to manage the emotional aspects of their work and to appreciate the limits of the role that we play in our clients lives. Some suggested readings and helpful tools that came out of the discussion are:

Professional Quality of Life Measurements  which provides a survey for determining how we handle vicarious trauma.

On line-videos such as Resilience Man for jumpstarting the discussion.

Other materials and tools are available on the AALS clinical conference website.

The topic is a reminder that if we wish to train sustainable lawyers to continue our human rights work, then a priority must be paying attention to our triggers and our emotional health.