If we want a healthy, sustainable legal profession, we need a different approach to addressing trauma in our work, writes Iolanthe Gabrie.
Working in law is a test of resilience, but for those in the highest-conflict categories – think criminal law, family law, and domestic violence matters – it’s a marathon of empathy, exposure, and emotional stamina. And while the profession often discusses burnout, it continues to tiptoe around its close cousin: vicarious trauma.
At Ruby Assembly, we recently chose to invest in trauma care training with Blue Knot Australia. As we continue to grow with our legal category clients, our own exposure to traumatic material has also increased. Regardless of your role – lawyer, writer, or barrister – exposure to client and colleague distress is part of the gig when you’re working with family dynamics and frontline vulnerability. What we don’t talk about enough is how profoundly this can eat into our sense of safety, identity, and even faith in human goodness.
The Blue Knot training: A catalyst for change
As a business owner, I see my primary role not only as a driver of excellence for clients, but as a protector of my team’s wellbeing. We work day in and out with talented legal professionals whose courage inspires us, and whose sharing of matters they’re working on can sometimes be quite shocking. When I investigated support solutions to better scaffold my team’s welfare, I discovered trauma training wasn’t standard for writers, and (let’s be honest) rare for most legal practices. But why should lawyers, especially those dealing with intense client trauma, be left to go it alone?
The Blue Knot workshop provided my team with language, frameworks, and permission to foreground their own psychological safety. We learned real strategies for boundary-setting, understanding the difference between empathy and compassion, and identifying early warning signs before compassion fatigue or vicarious trauma sets in. This scaffolding has shifted our day-to-day culture: now, we’re more deliberate about debriefing, peer support, and regulating exposure to traumatic material.
Protection for employers, not just practitioners
This kind of proactive approach isn’t just a feel-good HR move; it’s potentially a structure that protects your practice from avoidable turnover, absenteeism, and workplace harm. Something you might consider implementing in your practice culture is an annual (or six-monthly) scheduled ProQOL self-check tool (a staple in health professions but foreign to most legal teams) to better understand colleagues’ risk factors.
Here’s where I’m floored: in the world of psychology, regular supervision is a non-negotiable. No therapist would be expected to process trauma in isolation. Yet, in law – particularly for those dealing with family or domestic violence – ongoing supervision remains the exception, not the rule. The expectation is that stoicism and “toughness” will get you through, when the evidence shows that, without support, even the most resilient practitioners can find themselves in crisis.
A call for cultural leadership in law
If we want a healthy, sustainable legal profession, we need a different approach to addressing trauma in our work. Leadership must model open conversations about the toll of the work – not as a weakness to be drilled out of colleagues, but as an inevitable reality needing structure and care. Embedding mandatory supervision, peer support, and trauma training is not just for psychologists. It’s prudent risk management and an ethical responsibility to your people.
After all, how can we expect lawyers and the judiciary to safeguard justice for others if they’re not being safeguarded themselves?
Iolanthe Gabrie is the director of Ruby Assembly and co-founder of LexNova Guild.
