Sparer and Public Service Law Panel Zeroes in on the Secondary Trauma of Public Interest Careers and Finding Resilience

Students rise to their feet to practice “box breathing” as part of a panel discussion led by a team from the Legal Aid Society’s Juvenile Rights Practice with a focus on how to find resilience to help deal with the secondary trauma of public interest work. 

Staff attorneys and social workers from the Legal Aid Society’s Juvenile Rights Practice addressed the impact of “secondary trauma stress” on public interest professionals, and shared advice on how best to cope with the repercussions of working closely with clients who have experienced trauma directly. The panel discussion, titled “What Our Work Does to Us,” was held at the Subotnick Center Monday night. 

The discussion, primarily attended by students who are interested in careers in public interest law, focused on identifying secondary trauma stress and vicarious trauma and developing strategies for resilience. Panelists, all from the Legal Aid Society’s Juvenile Rights Practice (LAS JRP), included Vicki Light, an attorney who represents children in the New York City Family Courts in the Bronx; attorney Lina Del Plato ’00 in the Brooklyn office; attorney Brad Martin in the Manhattan office; and social workers Eileen Lopez and E. Jean-Marie Catlett. Cosponsored by the Public Service Law Center and the Edward V. Sparer Public Interest Law Fellowship program, the program was introduced by Public Service Law Center Executive Director Amy Hsieh ’11 and Professor Vijay Raghavan, co-director of the Sparer Fellowship program. 

Opening the discussion was Light, who mostly represents children in abuse and neglect cases in Bronx Family Court.  

“We have found that public interest work can be meaningful, fascinating, invigorating, and all those good things, which is why we chose to do it. However, it can also be overwhelming: we miss doctor’s appointments, we skip lunch, we work long hours, and we feel overwhelmed,” Light said. “We know that it can take a toll on us, and we have found that it’s good to talk about it and awareness is key.” 

The Legal Aid Society started a Wellness at Work program in 2009 to address the high levels of stress of public interest work that was shared by employees via a survey. The panelists shared information on how to identify secondary trauma stress and offered helpful strategies that have been developed as a result.  

Martin explained that the stress of people who work in the “helping professions,” such as in public interest work, result in what is popularly called compassion fatigue. Unlike the type of stress that can be beneficial (such as the drive to study for the bar exam or prepare for an upcoming court case), this type of fatigue and stress can result in feeling helpless, chronic exhaustion, anxiety, poor sleep, and anger and cynicism, among numerous other impacts.  

“This is not day-to-day stress that you will get on the job, like clients who are demanding or judges who are demanding or opposing attorneys who are not cooperative,” Martin said. “This is something that very much stems from the subject matter that you're going to be dealing with.”   

The key is to recognize it and address it before it leads to burnout, because once someone burns out, they can no longer effectively help clients, he said. 

One simple strategy to cope with secondary trauma stress daily is through breathing. Martin led the audience through a round of “box breathing,” which entails inhaling to the count of four, pausing for a count of four, exhaling to a count of four, and again pausing for a count of four to “close the box.” 

Del Plato, who described working with children who were removed from homes by Child Protective Services, spoke about the complexities of a system in which children may want to return home but cannot because their parents don’t have the ability or the resources or training needed to make that possible. “Parents aren't able to follow through with the conditions that allow them to have the children return home… and then we're left with telling those children that they can't come home yet, even if they want to,” Del Plato said. “We often end up experiencing a general feeling that success or failure of a client situation falls solely on our shoulders.” 

At that point, it is important to take a step back, she said. “We are their attorney or their social worker. We are not the one that saves them or their family,” Del Plato said. “So it's important to remember that our work is directed by our clients and our clients’ wishes, and thus, both our scope of action and our ability to achieve what we might see as the best result are also limited, and we have to then trust our clients’ decisions.” 

One of her favorite tactics for dealing with stress is using a gratitude journal to write down things for which she is grateful.  

Lopez, who works with clients as a social worker, said that empathy drives the work, but there are limitations to that. “We have younger clients that have gone through quite a traumatic experience, and all you can think about is you want to make sure that you are there for them. And while you can understand some of what they're going through, you can’t fully be in their shoes,” Lopez said. One of her strategies for dealing with secondary trauma is discussing situations with a colleague to try to sort it through. As a supervisor, she is also careful not to contact her subordinates who are on vacation or out sick unless necessary.  

Her colleague, Catlett, agreed that setting distinct boundaries between her work and personal life is especially important, and that having a mobile phone that is just for work, a perk that started during the pandemic, has helped immensely with that.  

“A lot of my clients, especially teenage clients, want to reach me on my cell phone, and I tell them that I generally work until x hour, and if they text me or reach out and I don't answer, the reason is because it’s after that hour or over the weekends,” Catlett said. Similarly, it is important to have colleagues who help protect one another’s boundaries, as Lopez does. “We may not always have boundaries protected by our supervisors or the places we're working,” she said, “but we still deserve to put those in place for ourselves so we can do the best work that we can.”  

To see photos from the event, click here.