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5 Barrister 8 (1978)
Lawyer Burn out

handle is hein.journals/barraba5 and id is 64 raw text is: It can happen to anyone, but one type of practitioner is particularly prone to Lawyer Burn Out When clients come to see legal ser- vices attorneys around Christmas time, they often mention their in- ability to buy Christmas gifts for their children. Many attorneys are sympathetic to the problem, but can offer very little practical help. One such attorney was a 35-year- old woman with four years' exper- ience in a west coast legal services office. She was the mother of a young child herself, but after a day of sympathetic listening she be- came less and less emotionally involved. Towards the end of the afternoon, faced with yet another client complaining about an inability to buy presents, she just lost control and yelled at the client: Go rob Macy's! Get your kids whatever you want for them! Don't come back to see me unless you get caught and then I'll defend you on the charge of theft! That evening, in thinking about the incident, the attorney realized that she had burned out. She left her job a few months later and took an administrative position at a law school. In recent years, there has been a growing concern in this country about the high turnover in legal ser- vices offices. The turnover rate was approximately 33 percent in 1976, and recent information suggests that the average length of stay for most attorneys is not much more than two years. Although the causes of this high turnover are undoubted- ly multiple and complex (including lack of professional growth opportu- nities, lack of salary prospects and poor management), a reason that is commonly cited by the attorneys themselves is that they have burned out. Just what does that mean, and what can be done about it? Burn-out is a syndrome of emo- tional exhaustion in which the at- torney has very little concern, sym- pathy or respect for clients. Over time, there is a psychological de- tachment from clients and a shift in the attorney's attitudes toward the cynical or negative. It is not unusual to hear such comments as, I just don't give a damn anymore, I can't stand working with clients so much or I wish they would all go away and leave me alone. In addition to think- ing of clients in increasingly derog- atory terms, attorneys begin to be- lieve that clients are somehow de- serving of any problems they have- a blame the victim orientation. Consequently, the quality of the legal service that the client receives deteriorates. Minimal attention and effort is given to each case, and a callous, even dehumanized pro- cessing of clients takes place. One attorney, less than a year out of law school exploded, It's like a god- damn factory here, a legal services factory! Only instead of cars on the assembly line, like General Motors, we've got people. An apt characterization of at- torney burn-out is provided by Pro- fessor Gary Bellow of Harvard Law School, a leading .authority on legal aid work. I have so often seen good, competent lawyers begin to process people like machines, rarely doing more than placing their problem into a category to be recorded and me- chanically dealt with. I have watched the same attorneys lose their en- thusiasm, their creativity and their commitment. People are dealt with and described in statistical terms, in general rather than in particular, and as part of a stream of problems rather than as human beings. Although burn-out may be fairly widespread among legal services at- torneys, it is not unique to this pro- fession. It is a problem that is shared by professionals in a wide range of human services. What is common to all of these professionals is that hour after hour, day after day, they are intimately involved with the psy- chological, social and/or physical problems of troubled human beings. This close, continuous contact with clients involves a chronic level of emotional stress, and it is the inabil- ity to cope successfully with this stress that is manifested in the emo- tional exhaustion and cynicism of burn-out. BURN-OUT VICTIMS INCLUDE CLIENTS, FAMILY For the past few years, we have been studying the dynamics of burn-out among these various groups in col- laboration with co-workers at the University of California in Berkeley. Our findings to date show that burn- out has serious repercussions for (Please turn to page 52) by Christina Maslach and Susan E. Jackson Dr. Maslach is Associate Professor of Psychology. University of California. Berkeley Susan Jackson is a graduate student in the Psychology Department

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