September 11th: Pro Bono and Trauma

Abstract

It is an understatement to say that the legal profession does not prepare its members well for the emotional thickets in which they may find themselves in practice. Lawyers are confused over the appropriateness of raising emotional and psychological issues with their clients, and they are generally ill-prepared to raise them.

During the summer of 2002, a little under a year after the terrorist attacks, the author came across some of the literature on the occupational hazards that caregivers face in working with trauma victims and she decided to explore what relevance this literature might have for the attorneys doing September 11th pro bono work. The author set out to interview as many of those attorneys as were willing to share their experiences. What follows is a brief discussion of direct and secondary trauma, how this trauma has affected the attorneys with whom the author has spoken, the healing that doing this work has afforded them, some of the difficulties they have encountered, and how well prepared they were to do this work.

Keywords: September 11th, legal profession, New York City, American Bar Association, facilitators, Post-traumatic Stress Disorder, Pro Bono, PTSD, trauma, emotional competence, legal education, psychological training