How Lawyers Can Be Better Client Mental Health Advocates

A staggering 87% of lawyers report most of their clients have expressed anxiety, depression and other mental health conditions due to their legal situation. Even more alarming, 89% suspected their clients were reluctant to ask for help. 

While the conversation around mental health has grown in recent years, it’s clear legal clients need additional support. As a champion and advocate for your clients, you can play an important role in supporting their mental health and wellbeing.

Understanding a client’s mental health

Obviously lawyers are not trained mental health professionals. However, you can still help relieve your clients’ stress during your working relationship. Clients’ stress levels will vary from case to case, so it’s critical to follow a few best practices to avoid escalation.

• Be flexible: Every day, people manage mental health disorders like anxiety and depression, ADHD, addiction, etc., unrelated to their legal case. Be mindful that your clients may be grappling with these mental health challenges in addition to the added stressors that led them to seek your services. Give clients space to process their thoughts and emotions and understand that you may not be privy to every detail of their personal lives or mental health. Patience and empathy help you best represent your clients’ interests in the long run, which leads to greater trust and, likely, a better case outcome.
• Draw from past client experiences: Mental health is no longer a taboo topic in mainstream culture but talking about a personal experience is still difficult. Although attorneys aren’t qualified to make mental health diagnoses, you still can draw from past experiences to infer whether a client may be struggling. Pay attention to your clients’ speech patterns, mood swings, emotional reactions and thought processes as cues they may be dealing with more than just the stress of a legal case.

• Be empathetic: Trust is at the core of any successful client-lawyer relationship. To build trust, attorneys must be empathic to those they represent, regardless of their background or current situation. Such empathy should also extend to your clients’ mental health. With empathy at the forefront of the relationship, clients will likely be more willing to open up about their lives, offering lawyers critical details of their case or mental state. By using empathy, attorneys can see from their clients’ perspectives, giving them a better understanding of their life experiences and the impact of their legal case on their mental wellbeing.
• Know your audience:  Just as lawyers code-switch, adjusting speech styles for specific audiences like judges or other litigators, they need to do the same for clients — especially those whose mental health affects their communication, decision-making or cognitive functions. Adjust your communication to match your clients’ ability to process information to ensure they’re involved throughout the litigation process. For example, some mental disorders greatly affect an individual’s ability to read and understand documents, making it imperative that you verbally communicate as much as you’re writing information down. 
• Know when to seek outside support: It’s important to support every client you represent. However, there may come a time when your client’s mental health is severely impacted by the stress of the legal case. Know your limits and when to help your clients seek help from a trained mental health professional. 

Mental health resources for clients

Professional mental health services can be an impactful source of support for clients during stressful legal proceedings, but due to out-of-pocket costs and lack of insurance coverage these resources are not accessible for all. Remember these factors and their impact on your clients when recommending mental health resources. 

Becoming a better mental health advocate

There are a few simple practices lawyers can implement to support their clients’ mental health and become better advocates for people during times of acute stress.

• Educate yourself: There are more than 200 classified forms of mental illness. Although some like anxiety, depression and bipolar disorder are more common, you likely will represent clients with a range of mental health challenges throughout your career. That’s why it’s important to educate yourself about mental health, including signs of mental illness and symptoms a client may experience. Even a basic understanding of a client’s mental state helps build trust and makes you a better mental health advocate.
• Build a network of resources: If a client is struggling with their mental health, referring mental health resources will benefit both the client and the progression of their legal case. As you build up a network of therapists, you may also gain legal referrals from therapists with clients who need legal support, creating a symbiotic relationship of trust and accessible resources.  
• Converse with your colleagues: There’s always an opportunity to learn from our peers. Hold an open discussion with your colleagues to learn how they navigate mental health with their clients. By working together to establish best practices for supporting your clients’ mental health, you’ll build strong communication that will benefit present and future members of your firm.
• Care for your own mental health, too: While attorneys and their staff understand that stress and the legal profession can go hand in hand, the compounded effect of multiple tough cases can also affect your mental health. Don’t hesitate to capitalise on the same mental health resources you offer your clients, practice empathy in your workplace and shift workloads based on individual needs.

As an attorney, you also are a counsellor at law, and it’s your duty to support and help clients in any way you can. Once you’ve established best practices for identifying, assessing and understanding a client’s mental wellbeing, you’ll more effectively advocate for your clients’ mental health — both in and out of the courtroom.

About the author:  Ruchie Chadha is president of Smokeball, a company that offers legal practice management software to small law firms. In her role, she oversees the product, marketing, sales and client teams. Before joining Smokeball, Ruchie was a family law attorney serving in the Chicago area. She now focuses her career on delivering innovative solutions to lawyers so they can better serve their clients and build healthier businesses.