Clients on the Couch
Legal therapy can be just what the lawyer
ordered..
By Susan Howery
March/April 2000 IssueI’m always on the lookout for new career avenues for my students to
explore. Even before creating my post-degree certificate program, I began noticing that
more and more students were coming to paralegal programs with multiple degrees and long
careers in disciplines other than the law. For example, I’ve had several health care
professionals enter my program looking to either mesh their experience with a paralegal
career or looking to find a new professional experience.
When I first heard about a field called legal therapy
counseling services (legal therapy), my ears perked right up. I thought my students with
mental health care, social work or psychology backgrounds and the readers of Legal
Assistant Today might be interested in learning more on the subject.
What Is Legal Therapy Anyway?
Anyone who has worked in family law will immediately recognize the value of legal therapy.
The process of seeking and obtaining a divorce in an adversarial system is emotionally
draining, and in my experience, clients can go over the edge before it’s over. The
attorney may be poorly equipped, no matter how talented, to deal with a client’s
emotional seesaw. An attorney’s job is to help seek the best legal result for the
client, and he or she simply doesn’t have time to deal with the emotional turmoil
that is part of the process. Many times, the paralegal on the case will end up dealing
with the client’s emotional distress, and although many paralegals possess strong
interpersonal skills, this can be a poor use of their time and talent.
Ronni K. Burrows, co-founder of the Legal Therapy
Institute Inc. at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, Pa., saw an opportunity in all of
this. As an attorney at the Burrows Law Office in Pittsburgh, she had been practicing
matrimonial law since 1988 and decided to hire a mental health care practitioner to assist
in her practice. As a result, Burrows was able to double her caseload in the first year
and do what she does best: practice law.
“Most clients don’t even understand that
divorce involves a lawsuit. This is an emotional time for the client. One job of a legal
therapist counselor is to educate the client about what to expect from the lengthy
process,” Burrows explained. Legal therapist counselors (LTCs) aren’t hired to
provide psychotherapy for the client and are prohibited to do so by the Legal Therapist
Counselor Code of Ethics. They’re hired to allay the emotional problems the client
might face by explaining the process of the divorce, being available to answer questions
and escorting the client to hearings, depositions and trial. Attorneys and paralegals are
often too busy to return frantic telephone calls on a daily basis. An LTC can return those
calls. Not only does this help the client emotionally, it also helps strengthen the
attorney-client relationship. Attorneys and legal assistants are ethically bound to keep
the lines of communication open, and legal therapy is designed to do just that.
The main advantages of using the services of an LTC are:
- Ongoing emotional support and prevention strategies for
the client
- Assistance with preparing the client emotionally for
depositions and trial
- Assistance with the client at deposition and trial
- An improved attorney-client relationship
- More time for the attorney and paralegal on legal matters.
The LTC’s fee may or may not be passed on to the
client. The fee can be calculated into a firm’s overhead, or the fee may be
negotiated between the client and the attorney.
Certification
Burrows has developed a certification program through the Legal Therapy Institute. To
enter the program, you must have a master’s degree in a mental health discipline. The
certification requires two three-day weekends of coursework and a 40-hour supervised
practicum in a law firm. There is a strong ethics component in the training, and the
coursework provides the basics of divorce law practice and counseling strategies. Upon
successful completion of the requisite coursework and practicum, the individual can claim
the title of legal therapist counselor.
How Do Paralegals Fit In?
As I said, many students are entering my program with master’s degrees in various
disciplines, and at least three have had degrees in the mental health field. I asked
Burrows if she thought they would be good candidates for legal therapy certification and
she thought they’d make excellent candidates. She explained that many times LTCs have
a hard time understanding their role as advocates for the client. “Counselors
typically want to make it better for everybody. They may want to try to save the marriage,
and find it uncomfortable to act as an advocate for only one side. The built-in advantage
for paralegals is that they may understand this,” Burrows said.
After researching this subject, I’ve concluded that
someone who is trained as a paralegal and looking for a career change may be extremely
well-equipped to be an LTC. There are many built-in advantages: paralegals have the
training and experience in the legal field that mental health care practitioners lack;
paralegals have first-hand experience with the nuances of cases, law practice, the players
involved and the court system; and much of the education required to help a client deal
emotionally with the stress of a difficult battle is obtained through rigorous training
and experience.
Paralegals also understand the ethical duties involved in
dealing with clients. Burrows said that when she designed the curriculum for the Legal
Therapy Institute, she borrowed from various paralegal model codes of ethics.
This is a specialty area that could greatly enhance the
practice of law and expand the role paralegals play in it. Lawyers have just recently
recognized the value of using nurses in their practices. Legal nurses are valuable because
of a combination of medical and legal training. Imagine what these talented individuals
can offer to any case involving medical issues. The same can be true of paralegals who
have a mental health care background. Using legal nurses and LTCs on staff or as
consultants frees the lawyer to practice law, and provides the client with expert
assistance not previously provided.
Current Practice
According to Burrows, there are a number of firms nationwide that currently employ LTCs.
The firms range from large practices to solo practitioners. Some of the firms use the
services of LTCs on a part-time basis and some use them for consults.
Pittsburgh attorney Constance McKeever has been using the
services of LTCs since 1995. Burrows used the services of Sharon Saul, a psychologist (and
now an LTC) for several years. She put her on the payroll for an average of 15 hours per
week. Burrows said that ordinarily, using an LTC in this manner, a lawyer should expect to
pay about $45 to $55 an hour. Some larger firms have hired LTCs to do consults, and have
paid up to $125 an hour. Saul no longer works for Burrows because Saul’s practice,
Associates in Solution Oriented Psychology, has grown substantially and now occupies the
majority of her time.
Predicting the Future
I see the advantages of using an LTC in any complex litigation. After speaking with
Burrows, I let my mind wander back to some of my experiences with complex litigation. Some
of the most difficult client relationships I dealt with weren’t only in divorce
cases, but also in wrongful death, medical malpractice and personal injury cases. In these
types of cases, clients are traumatized in so many ways, and litigation can often take up
to two years or longer. I thought about the many benefits of using an LTC, and the
caseload we might have had without all of the time spent dealing with the clients’
anxieties and pain. As Burrows said, “In a divorce case, about 18 percent is legal.
The rest is a breakdown between financial and emotional issues.” |
