Natalie Netzel of Mitchell Hamline Law School explains why trauma-informed lawyering is the way forward for law schools, legal educators and future lawyers.
Natalie Netzel of Mitchell Hamline Law School explains why trauma-informed lawyering is the way forward for law schools, legal educators and future lawyers.
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>> Myrna McCallum : I'm Myrna McCallum, Metis Cree lawyer and passionate promoter of Trauma informed layering. Welcome back to the Trauma Informed Lawyer Podcast. As you know, I believe that law schools and bar courses are missing a critical competency requirement in their curriculum. Trauma Informed Lawyering. Becoming a Trauma Informed lawyer will, among other things, challenge you to critically reflect on your personal behaviors, beliefs and biases, call on you to positively transform the way you approach advocacy, guide your practice to avoid doing further harm to others, and ask that you commit to remaining open to learn new and old knowledge you didn't know you needed before beginning your career. Your education starts right here, right now. Transcripts for season two have been generously sponsored by the BC Law Foundation.
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>> Myrna McCallum : Welcome back to another episode of the Trauma Informed Lawyer Podcast. I have a little bit of news. The Law foundation of British Columbia has come forward with some, cash and a podcast production team which will allow me to create season three of the podcast. Yay. I'm envisioning like a worldwide applause right now. This, is fantastic because the production team, they're professional podcasters, they're going to take care of a lot of the stuff that is really challenging for me and time consuming for me. We're going to do a six episode pilot, see how that goes. But the Trauma Informed Lawyer will definitely be around for a little while yet. I just wanted to share that with you. I'm so excited. Thank you BC Law foundation for supporting my work and recognizing the value, the educational value that this podcast provides for the legal profession. I also wanted to say, I just concluded my second Trauma Informed justice course last week. It was a resounding success and I now have this idea that I'm going to deliver that course each month and I just need to start selecting dates as of January to deliver that three day course. So if you are interested, go to my website, www.myrna mccallum co. Scroll to the bottom of the page. There's a little field there that allows you to enter your email address if you want to, of any events or courses that I'm delivering and you'll get a notification so you won't be out of the loop. If you want to support this podcast, please consider leaving me a tip. Not like, oh Myrna, do something about your vocal fry, but like cash money tip@ko fi.com forward/the trauma informed lawyer. That's K-O-F I.com forward/the trauma Informed Lawyer. Thanks so much. With that, we're going to launch in today's episode I had the pleasure of having conversation with Natalie Netzel. She is a co director, clinical education program lawyer at Mitchell Hamline Law School. I think her proper title is Assistant professor of Law Education Advocacy Director, Institute to Transform Child Protection. I think you're going to enjoy this conversation. Here we go.
>> Myrna McCallum : Hi there, Natalie. Welcome to the Trauma Informed Lawyer podcast.
>> Natalie Netzel: So amazing to be here. Thanks so much for having me.
>> Myrna McCallum : Well, I'm happy to have you. I love having academics and you're more than an academic. I know, but I love having academics on the podcast because you all do the kind of like research and writing I can only dream of doing. I mean, and when I say dream of doing it, like literally I dream about it. I just don't have the focus, I think, to do it. And really like, I think it's an awesome job that you have. I'm so glad that you're here. I just want to tell like our listeners that I, you and I, I think crossed paths a couple times. But I saw recently you had written an article on vicarious trauma and I love reading articles from the academic perspective. And then you and I connected and you sent me a bigger article and then when we had a little back and forth. Let's just talk a little bit about the work that you've been doing.
>> Natalie Netzel: Thank you. See, I am an assistant professor of law at Mitchell Hamline and I co direct our clinical legal education program. So in that I actually supervise law students and social work students who provide direct representation to families and youth in the child welfare system. And from that experience, really a heightened, and more nuanced understanding of trauma developed. specifically when, you know, probably about five or six years ago, I kept hearing in courtrooms that my clients like therapist wasn't good enough because they weren't a trauma informed therapist. And then I got curious and said, what does that actually mean? Especially if you're saying that the services my client isn't getting aren't good enough because they're not trauma informed. From that point I went down really here and just opening up my mind to what does it mean to be a trauma informed lawyer. And I'm super lucky to also practice law with a director of trauma informed care social worker. And we work together. she's really helped further my understanding of that too. But it's, you know, through litigation and seeing the term trauma informed thrown around that I really started to realize I needed to A, figure out what that means for me and B, that in my position as a law professor, figure out along with the call of your podcast, how do we actually teach law students how to become trauma informed lawyers?
>> Myrna McCallum : Oh my gosh. Right, that, that's like the million dollar question. but you know, like hearing your story of how you came to this reminds me of my conversation with Sarah Katz. Right, and thank God for Sarah Katz, because if not for her and D. Alder's article, the Pedagogy of Trauma Informed Lawyering, I would have never had a name for the way I had started to practice law. I was starting to practice law in a lot of the ways that they identify in their paper. But you know, folks who would witness me examining people when I was an adjudicator, for example, would often say, you know, you're a lot more relaxed and relational and a little more casual. I realized when I read her article that it was, this was trauma informed. Like it was, this is how you take a trauma informed approach to listening to people tell you a tragic traumatic story. This is, hey, take a trauma informed approach to examining people, to testing their evidence. Right, because it doesn't have to be beating people down with a stick.
>> Natalie Netzel: Yeah, absolutely. And I would say that, the Miriam is our director of trauma informed care. And when we started on this journey of understanding what trauma informed wiring was together, and certainly influenced by the work of others like, you know, Sarah Katz and Dia Holder, you know, she said, well, Natalie, like it's surprising that you don't have a definition because you do this. And I like really appreciated that, but then thought I need to figure out what this is. Because once we can hone in on what it is, then it becomes a skill to promote and teach and develop. Because I think every lawyer has the capability and capacity to learn these skills. and I think really that's a trauma informed, informed lawyering is, is like a set of skills that can be, can be taught.
>> Myrna McCallum : So do you find that, at least in my practice, I find that the how I define trauma informed layering has been evolving. Like the more I learn, the more I do, the more it evolves. And I'm curious, like, what are your thoughts and can you give us a definition of what you understand trauma informal to be?
>> Natalie Netzel: I think it's absolutely a process that evolves. Especially as, you know, there's a lot that we know about trauma and there's a lot that we don't know about trauma. So I expect that in addition to being a, skill set, being a trauma informed lawyer is also a process, an ongoing, lifelong process. Personally, I look to the tenants of Trauma informed care from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration and try and apply those tenants to my practice because I think it simplifies what or it makes easier to understand what can be complicated and overwhelming. So how, as a lawyer do I create physical and emotional safety when I am with my clients or others? How do I embody trustworthiness and transparency when interacting with my clients? And that's something I think that as a matter of course, I hope any good lawyer would do is want to be transparent in their interactions with their clients. But it's also a trauma informed principle. How do I view my client as a person who is a collaborator? How do I bring in collaboration and mutuality to that relationship, understanding that my client and I have distinct and important roles working together? How do I bring in peer support, empowerment, voice and choice? And how do I. And this is one where I'm always learning and I appreciate your podcast as being a tool for this, you know, look at cultural and gender and historical issues and how does that inform my lawyering too? So I, you know, take those tenants and try and apply each one as I am working with clients and really as I'm teaching my students too.
>> Myrna McCallum : For folks who are listening to us who don't practice family law have zero interest in it. Maybe they are in immigration, another high trauma traffic area, or a criminal, or maybe they're in corporate or they're doing estates or they're doing these other things. Would you say that this approach to lawyering applies also to them?
>> Natalie Netzel: Absolutely. So when I wrote that this piece on vicarious trauma, where I both focus on trauma informed Larry and share a few personal stories of how lawyering, and working with people who have experienced trauma in systems that cause immense amount of trauma, how that's impacted me, I thought I'd hear from family defense attorneys and maybe public defenders. I thought I would hear from that group of people. I've heard from judges, I've heard from partners at big law firms, certainly folks doing medical malpractice or immigration law, criminal. I mean I've heard from everyone that that piece was. Or people or people from all different kinds of practice areas that that piece was really relatable. And I think it's because I also like to take a, you know, universal precaution approach. I don't know when I. If I am interacting with someone who has experienced trauma, a lot of the time, sometimes I do know, but most of the time I don't. But, that doesn't mean that just because I Don't know someone's traumatic experiences that they're not impacted by how they're interacting with me. By adopting a trauma informed M approach across the board, it benefits, I think everyone and people interact with lawyers because something big is going on in their life and even doesn't like rise to or stem from a trauma. People are interacting with lawyers because they are like having something major go on that is probably emotionally centered or emotionally charged and even like mergers and acquisitions bring out big emotions for people. And trauma. Informed lawyering while focused on trauma. Also, all of those things I listed earlier help with anyone who's experiencing emotions. And really in law school historically, we, you know, teach the analytical skills, we teach how to write, we teach how to argue, we teach all of those things. And you will never hear me say that's not important. But we don't actually teach about the emotional aspect of, law in any meaningful way. And I think that does a great disservice to law students who recognize there is an emotional aspect to law, to lawyers who we seem to be sending the message that the emotional aspect of law is not important. And all of that then trickles down into, to the clients that we serve and then I think perpetuates problematic systems that we have in place when we just don't realize that that is like the core to why people interact with lawyers.
>> Myrna McCallum : I'm with you about, like, law school is missing the mark when they ignore the value of emotional intelligence. I mean, I know that when I came out of law school, I came out of law school, you know, understanding that my job was to identify issues and to give people advice, right? And nowhere, at no point in time did anyone ever give me a heads up that people weren't just bringing their, bring their issues to my door. They were going to bring all of their pain, their suffering, their fear, their anxiety, their trauma. And I didn't know what to do with any of that because I wasn't prepared for it. And when it showed up, I mean, I was quite transactional to begin with, so I was very. I don't know what to do with this. So you need to like, tone that down so we could get to your issue. And I know a lot of lawyers still practice that way, which is why our, our profession has become known to be quite dehumanizing, demoralizing, etc, right? I mean, I had a Mar doll. Dr. Mardol was on my podcast not that long ago. We talked about emotional intelligence. He's got all this data and research and all he's done all this stuff. And he, one of the things that he said is that studies have shown that the more emotionally intelligent we are as lawyers, the more successful we are, the more money we make, the better outcomes in all sorts of ways. Are law schools ready to embrace emotional intelligence as a critical core competency for lawyers? And if not, what's it going to take?
>> Natalie Netzel: I think we are trending in the right direction in that regard. I think that law and law schools are slow to change. But you know, recently the American Bar association passed a, some new standards. One of which is that all law schools must provide well being resources to law students. Another is that all law schools must provide instruction on professional identity formation, on cross cultural competence, on bias and on racism. And the fact that the ABA has now imposed or embraced these additional standards is leading to some, it's elevating all of those issues. And I think that emotional intelligence runs through all three of those new additions to the ABA standards. So I'm hopeful that there's really great conversations going on. And even though sometimes I feel like the things I'm saying about trauma informed lawyering are not things other people are saying, I do feel like those ideas have been embraced by other law professors. And that's where I so appreciative of the scholarship that has come before me and the opportunity to create scholarship, to really like get academics to wrap our heads around like how do we teach law students in a trauma informed way? Because this is important. I think, yeah, so the importance is I think recognized. The how do we do it? Is where we're at right now.
>> Myrna McCallum : Interesting. How do we do it? There's a book coming out, the A.B. the ABA is publishing on Trauma Informed Law, A Primer for Lawyers, which I, am a co editor on, along with Jake Him Wright, Marjorie Floristal and Helgi Mackie. I cannot wait till this book hits the shelves because it's so, I don't know, it's like it's this baby that we've been gestating and, and fine tuning and it'll be really interesting to see how the legal profession receives it. But so stay tuned listeners for when that when that book comes out and you'll be seeing it all over my social media for sure. You know, I was thinking about last season. I've recorded a podcast episode with a group of law students. They talked about at University of Victoria Law School here on the west coast in Canada. They were talking about how their legal education traumatizes Them and what it is that law professors could do to take a trauma informed approach. And they even highlighted some of the professors that they had who were very trauma informed and just how not only transformational the course was for them, but almost like had some healing aspects to it. Because, as you have highlighted in the draft, research paper you sent me, there's, I think an increasing recognition or there needs to be that when law students come into law school they often come in with a lot of trauma themselves. They've experienced personal trauma. And that needs to be reflected in how professors teach what they teach, particularly when the content is so incredibly graphic.
>> Natalie Netzel: Yes. I mean the research paper I'm working on highlights and builds off of or builds off of and comments on this recent survey for lost student well being in a recent paper that came out and I'll have to get you the names of those people to highlight, ah, because their research is really important. And what they found is that 80% of law students or more have report having experienced at least one potentially traumatic event in their life. And that tracks with the general population. And I say potentially traumatic because there's the event that happens. But trauma really is, you know, in my understanding how people experience events or series of events and how that impacts them. But of those 80%, over 20% meet some baseline criteria to be screened for PTSD. And that is certainly a really important thing for all law professors to be aware of, that we are teaching people who may be very likely to be having trauma responses based on their trauma histories in our classes. And the one thing that I do find to be quite hopeful though is, you know, we know that resilience and recovery are some of the more common outcomes, of people who have experienced trauma. And that is hopeful in that it is, you know, it is a possibility and trauma as an injury that we can work on healing and that can be healed and not a like bad thing that has happened such that someone can never function ever again or not contribute. And what we also learned from the survey is that 50% of law students report coming to law school because of a trauma or injustice they have experience that factors into why they're coming. Add that to the concept of post traumatic wisdom and post traumatic growth, that the act of working through one's trauma can give people really unique and important and valuable insights. And if we can get it right as law professors and not re traumatize or traumatize our law students or at least not cause additional harm to them, the legal profession is going to get to benefit from, from the post traumatic wisdom. And you know, anecdotally, I watch students who go on to be lawyers, who have come to law school because of challenges they've experienced, go on to be the wisest, the most passionate, like the best lawyers that I know are people who come to law school, some real life experience, and then take that and have their drive to serve as law professors. I feel like it is our job to not get in the way of that and to support and to foster and to create relationships that are healing. So we are putting out the best lawyers and really, you know, supporting these students as they are going out into practice.
>> Myrna McCallum : I don't know why, Natalie, when you were talking, all of a sudden I was like, man, I would have liked to have seen a class called relationship 101. Just like, just. And not just client attorney relationships, because I know immediately people's minds are going to jump to that thing. Oh, there is a module that we have on that. No, no, no. Just relationships. How do you build not just relationships with clients, but colleagues? Because that also informs the cultures in our workplaces. Right. Like, or the quality or lack thereof, but also the relationship that you have with yourself. So when I hear you talk about like post traumatic growth and post traumatic wisdom, I'm always like, ah, not all of us get there. As, you know, trauma tends to trip us up, maybe sometimes cause us to detour or fall into a ditch and kind of stay there for 20 years, consumed, by alcohol or drugs or, you know, just bad behavior. And. And sometimes we see this in the profession, like, I don't know how. I'm sure it's not that different in America than it is in Canada. We have one of the highest rates of substance abuse. Right. And depression and all of these. Like, we don't have really good mental health outcomes. So the relationship building piece, like, how important do you think that is for lawyers to learn to be good with themselves, learn about themselves, invest in relationship building with their colleagues and then with their client? I sort of see it as like a ripple effect.
>> Natalie Netzel: I mean, Myrna, I think that's so important and so critical because, yeah, you're right. That, you know, in, in, you know, the United States, it sounds like we have the same struggles. I mean, we also have really, like, known since the late 80s that mental health declines once people start law school compared to other similarly situated people. And that's something that I feel very personally because I went into the legal profession with my mental health in a good place and then became One of those numbers who developed an anxiety disorder during law school and beyond. And I say that knowing it's relatable, knowing that I think 40% of law students should be screened for anxiety and, or have an anxiety disorder. This is just like so common that that I think that starting with that relationship with yourself is really important. Because when I am suffering and having anxious thoughts, I'm not nearly as good to my students, my colleagues, my clients. And also at the same time there's this like, you know, cycle I get started in. But it's like, but man, there's so many other people who are suffering more than me. So I can't, I can't take care of me because that's time spent not helping someone else. What I have come to learn through a variety of different ways of healings and working with healing and working with a bunch of different professionals and just being on this trauma informed journey too is that if I'm not taking some time to check in with my own mental health and take care of my own well being, I'm not able to be as effective as I could otherwise be in helping others. And I think that having that conversation in law school with law students is really important. And it's where I show up with a little bit of vulnerability. Not because I need my law students to like help me with my anxiety, because I just want them to know like, hey, if you're experiencing this, like it's normal. And I'm like pretty successful as a lawyer and I'm a law professor and like I've struggled with these things. So if you're struggling, there's a way to be. Okay, let's figure out the plan to get there. So I think that starting with taking care of ourselves as lawyers, especially when we are in a profession that causes harm, we have the data to know that being in the profession causes harm. That's the most important because every other relationship is really important too. And we make things worse in those other relationships often when we're not you know, being mindful of the relationship with self.
>> Myrna McCallum : I love Natalie that you are sharing that story, that connection to anxiety, because I really feel like the more lawyers, academics, judges, folks who come out and share a story of a personal connection to anxiety, depression, like substance abuse, whatever it might be, the more we do that, the more we destigmatize like all these mental health related, you know, ideas and I also think which then makes it okay for others to see speak up, right? To feel a little Bit courageous about doing that. But I also think what's really cool about that is how I think every time we speak up about it, we break down the myth of who the lawyer is or who the judge is. Right. That we are robotic, that we are, without any kind of feeling, that we're impervious to suffering or, impact in some. Right. Like, because there's this idea of who the lawyer is, people get an image or who the judge is, and they're completely, usually completely like, devoid of emotion. And they exist in a rational, analytical brain 24. 7. And I think that's problematic when we, when we hold up that kind of myth or stereotype.
>> Natalie Netzel: Yeah, absolutely. And the thing that's been fascinating to me is I feel like I started talking about the emotional aspect of law around the same time I started really learning and embracing trauma inform. But I started talking about the emotional aspect of law because I just didn't know what else to, to do. I was like, at the end and I was like, well, like, maybe this isn't. Maybe this isn't for me. And I guess I'll just tell everyone why. And then it, it turns out that that has kind of like become the why. And I have been shocked by how much it is embraced by others because when I share a story, they feel seen or feel a little bit more comfortable. and that in and of itself has, like, renewed my passion for this and, like, kept me in the legal profession even when there were moments of doubt. Like, I don't feel or seem like what I expect a lawyer to be. And my career has only improved since embracing the emotional aspect of law. My relationship with clients, my ability to show up and be supportive of students, all of that has improved when I've embraced emotions. And that wasn't what I expected was going to happen.
>> Myrna McCallum : I appreciate you sharing that because I also can't tell you how many young lawyers I've had come to me to say, I don't think I'm built for this profession. Like, I'm sensitive or I'm empathetic or I feel a lot of emotion or I'm, gentle. I'm like, you're exactly what this profession needs.
>> Natalie Netzel: Yes, yes, yes, yes. I mean, that is the exact same conversation I have when law students have this. I don't know if I'm cut out for this. And I'm like, and that's exactly why we need you. And then me be a part of. And others be a part of figuring out how to embrace and support that Tremendous strength that you have because it's undervalued. but that doesn't mean that you don't have something to contribute here.
>> Myrna McCallum : So what are you finding, Natalie, as you're teaching this trauma informed approach to lawyering? What are, what's the response that you're getting from colleagues? What's the response that you're getting from students?
>> Natalie Netzel: Yeah, so students 100%, like, keep me going and energized in this regard because anytime I bring up trauma, informed lawyering, or you know, talk about well being or the emotional aspect of law, I am thanked a million times over by students for like, thanks for like bringing this up and having this conversation. And you know, we really appreciate you saying this and doing this and like, we think that this is how law school needs to be and how lawyering needs to be. And then I feel so much hope, like, oh, this, this group of students is going to go out and they're going to like, hopefully like, be so much more trauma informed than the generation of lawyers that came beforehand. And you know, I think with my colleagues or with other professionals that they're appreciative of, the explanation of a thing that they've always kind of felt existed. And as I try and you know, do a bunch of academic research and be like, how do I break this down and like teach this to other people, they're appreciative like, thank you for helping like create a, model or help explain this. Because while they themselves didn't get education on being a trauma informed lawyer, so they don't necessarily. That wasn't something they were taught. So it's something that they have to learn. But I do find that the vast majority of colleagues and other law professors that I run into are interested in learning how to do this better. and that is hopeful.
>> Myrna McCallum : Absolutely. That's hopefully. I find sometimes that people when they don't know, they don't want to ask because there's also this whack idea that lawyers that we always need to have the answer to everything. So if we're, we don't know everything, we definitely don't want to let on. And I would love for lawyers to just like get rid of that as well and ask the questions like, what don't I know that I should. Yeah, right.
>> Natalie Netzel: I mean, law school like brings out the worst of our perfectionist tendencies. And I think too that, you know, I try and take a strengths based approach when talking with people who maybe haven't learned as much about trauma informed Wiring. And like I talked about, you know, I think many lawyers would agree that being transparent with their clients is good lawyering, regardless of if it's trauma informed and or many law professors would agree that like transparency with students is a good thing to strive for and a lot of them are trying to do that already. And I say like, wait, that's actually like part of being trauma informed. You're doing that, do more of it. And like, here's another thing that you could add on that you, that's in line with stuff that you're kind of already doing. And then it's, it's the ball rolling and it starts to get to the momentum where it's not just something that feels too overwhelming or something that they know nothing about because it's realizing that everyone has some innate capability to like do these things. It's just like, do you put your time, effort and energy into learning how to be better and building on the strengths that are already had?
>> Myrna McCallum : Ah, we talked a little bit, Natalie, about how your colleagues were responding to trauma. Informaly ring how the students are responding. But what about through your clinic? Are you seeing a difference in how your clients, how the clients engage with the students or engage with the clinic?
>> Natalie Netzel: Yeah, I mean one thing that is a unique feature of our clinic is that it's holistic and interdisciplinary. So we have law students and social work students working together. And add to that we don't have the same staggering level of caseloads. So we're able to really invest time early on in developing relationships with our clients and like getting to know them and understanding that rupture and repair is a part of a trauma informed process. So you know, the idea that we might mess up from time to time, but then it's about how do you repair that and come back and like rebuild and build up or you know, deepen and strengthen that trust. And with that initial investment in the beginning, we wind up then having really great relationships with our clients down the road because we've spent the time and they know that we're, you know, on our side. And when people encounter systems and you know, particularly you know, in the child welfare system, clients don't always know at first exactly like who I am when I'm showing up to like be their defense attorney and just may see me as one more person in the system and I have to earn that trust. But once I, once I do, clients are so much more, able to listen to the, you know, well intentioned advice that I am giving them. And ask questions and understand. Because there's a level of safety, I think, that we're able to develop. But it takes time and it takes practice. And also it takes, like, you know, an understanding that it's. Sometimes it's a little bit of a bumpy road, when you're meeting people on their journeys. And that's like a lawyer's job is to earn the trust of their client. It's not something that we should just expect by virtue of having passed an exam or have a license that says we can practice law.
>> Myrna McCallum : Right. Like you're entitled to it.
>> Natalie Netzel: Yeah.
>> Myrna McCallum : For lawyers who are listening, thinking, well, how do I do that? How do I earn trust? Particularly I'm thinking now about lawyers who work with folks who come from a different lived experience or different race or different culture or socioeconomic background where there's really clear differences. Right. And. Or power. There's a power imbalance, or there's. I sometimes talk about white privilege. There are these things in that space that we can choose to acknowledge or choose not to acknowledge. But for lawyers listening to her, like, how do I earn trust when I'm working? You know, like, say, they're delivering legal services to the mo. The poorest of the poor, and they go into community for this purpose, and people show up suspicious, angry, because they see you as part of the system. and. And of course, one of their fear responses are on overdrive. But what advice do you give students or lawyers who are struggling to earn trust or to connect with their client
>> Natalie Netzel: in the child welfare system? My, you know, you know, I'm a white woman, and the majority of my clients are not. I think that the idea of cultural humility as a foundational principle in trauma informed lawyering is. I don't even really love the term. And I think that I maybe even heard this first in your podcast, Cultural Competence versus cultural Humility. It's like, I can never understand your experience, but when you explain it to me, when it is, you know, when it shows up, I can listen and be curious and be open and recognize that clients are right to be distrustful of lawyers until a lawyer has earned their trust. And so then a lot of the stuff that I try to implement is small and simple and also very complex at the same time. You know, headlining things before I talk to client, like, and explaining why we have to have difficult conversations and giving. So, you know, saying, like, today we're going to. I'm going to ask you some questions that are going to be pretty invasive about your life and the Reason that I'm asking is because when we have to go into court at a later date, I need to have an understanding of what is going on so I can figure out how to best help you. And it's going to probably be a challenging conversation. And at any point that you need to stop and take a break, like let, please, like let me know. And if I notice that we might need to stop and take a break, like, I'll go get us some water and we can take a second to breathe before we jump back into this. Like, we can do this to the extent the court timelines law. We can do this on your time because it's tough and so acknowledging like the intensity of material and conversations and also like, I think another one is just doing what I say I'm going to do and, and being transparent at the outset. So like, I'm busy, I can't always respond within an hour or two when a client calls me. But I'll tell clients like at the outset, like, my like rule for myself is I will respond, you know, within 24 or 48 hours when you send something and I'm going to do that. And then if somebody might take a longer time to respond at sending the email at 24, like in that 24 hour period saying, I got what you said, this is really important. I'm doing a little bit more research and I'm going to get back to you and then getting back to them. So it's being a person who is, does my best to recognize that if I, when people have, are dealing with the most important things of their life, that even if I'm not blowing it off and I'm just busy somewhere else, I just need to like, ex. Make sure my clients, you know, know what to expect from working with me. And then also giving my clients opportunities to like, provide feedback if and when they want to, and listening if they're mad at me for something I said, like really being like, okay, like, you're right, I should not have said that in that way or I should not have done that in that way. I'm sorry. You know, here's what I'm going to try to do to be better next time and is there anything else you would like me to do to be better next time? And then actually doing those things. So it's, you know, those relational things that I try to teach, to teach students. and that then over time also like benefits me because once my clients are in that place of trust and understanding, our interactions like go better Too. And that makes it, you know, easier on me as a lawyer too, once the initial investment is there.
>> Myrna McCallum : Absolutely. I'm thinking about a couple other things I know I have found to work really well for me in my practice. One is I don't hesitate to acknowledge when the system has failed people.
>> Natalie Netzel: Yeah.
>> Myrna McCallum : I will say I know that the system has failed you or failed people like you. And whether that's survivors of sexual violence or whether that is indigenous women, I will acknowledge that from the out. Yes. And then I will commit to like giving it my all to avoid a repeat of that failure. And so I think sometimes getting trust and getting connection and earning that relationship requires sometimes admitting to the failures, the historical or systemic and ongoing failures that the system perpetuates. And the other piece I have found also really helpful and important for many clients is closing the loop on the relationship. Because of the way I approach what I do, people can get the idea that my empathy and patience and active listening and all of those things. I think it's really important that when the relationship ends that we have to let people know that it's now over. Right. Like this is us closing the loop. This is what you can, expect going forward. I won't be calling, I won't be available, available for check ins. We won't be doing that. Like it. This is what happens next. Right. Because what I have found is sometimes people will want to continue the relationship, but there's no need for it because whatever the legal issue is has now come to a conclusion. And I get why that is, particularly when we're talking about people who've been really, marginalized and traumatized. Why they would want to stay connected to somebody who maybe for the first time in their lives actually saw them and hurt them.
>> Natalie Netzel: Yeah, I think that, I mean to the first point, you know, absolutely acknowledging the role that systemic racism plays in why we are there interacting together and you know, denying that with people who have had those experiences is an additional trauma, a form of gaslighting. To not acknowledge that like we are here in part because the system is working exactly how it was intended to work, which is to further marginalize, in some clients. so like, yes, absolutely on that. And then to the second part. Yeah. I think that it comes down to clarity about role and responsibility in relationship and saying that at the beginning of like, you know, here's who, here's how we're going to work together. Here's like, what my role is, here's how I want to partner with you. And here's like, what your role is and like the help that I'm going to need from you so we can like be the best attorney client team possible. And then as the case is coming to an end and the role is, you know, the relationship is coming to an end. Explaining you, know now that the case is over, our, you know, relationship in this regard is going to be done. And I mean I do like certainly leave the door open for things like, and if you ever have questions about like your legal case that you need me to answer, if you have ever questions or like you don't need your, your filer need those things, or like your legal case is coming up in something else in the future and you need information from me, like please don't hesitate to reach out when you're reaching out because you need something for me as your lawyer. And also just acknowledging that I don't want to, in being a trauma informed lawyer, create a dependence on me. But that's where I think peer support is another one of those, you know, one of the tenants of trauma informed care. And how, as a lawyer am I like providing resources and making sure that my client, to the extent they're able to, is like tapped into other people or organizations. I know that like, might be able to be a continued source of support in their life. And that's something I have my eye on during the relationship because I miss my clients when they're out of my life and I need to be available to be a lawyer for new clients and they need to like, go on and live a life that doesn't involve being stuck in their past case 100%.
>> Myrna McCallum : I'm really glad that you shared that. I will often tell people that you should like at the beginning of the relationship, have a list of supports that are available in someone's community and be willing to offer that list to them and at the end of the relationship give them that list as well and remind them of who's available to support them. I mean in my particular work I'm very clear to draw a distinction between being a trauma informed lawyer and providing trauma informed care. Like I don't know how to do care, I don't know how to provide care in. And I think a lot of lawyers would resist that idea as well that we provide care providers. But I do think that if we're going to be navigating a legal process with someone where there's going to be a lot of trauma points, trigger points, we have an obligation to ensure that our client has access to care and access to support. That's beyond what we do. And so I love that with your clinic. It's collaborative. You've got social workers and you've got lawyers. And I personally think every big law firm should have an in house social work worker who's just there to have conversations with council about how they're managing stress, how they're taking care of themselves, how they're engaging with each other, how they're managing their files. It's like from an emotional place. Right. And and also from a trauma informed lens. How is that going? and then also to be able to do basic assessments about like whether somebody might benefit from ongoing psychological or psychiatric assistance or support during very heavy, heavy points in their lives. And I think right now for people who listen to this episode and think, well I haven't had any like trauma in my life. Well, I invite you to think again because I, I really think that this pandemic has brought up a lot in people that they didn't even know was there. And it has flipped a lot of our worlds upside down. And I think that we're experiencing a collective trauma. And if not this pandemic, witnessing the war on Ukraine, the potential collapse of the entire world's economy and all of the doomsday stuff that's constantly in the news, right. Is it's doing something to our psyches and we need to recognize how we're being impacted by our environment.
>> Natalie Netzel: That's such an important point. And you know, to the. I love the idea of having a social worker in every firm. And I think that as lawyers we also really, to further that, like we need to embrace learning from other disciplines because we seem to think no one can possibly, like we're lawyers, no one can possibly understand that. But you know, this. I use a lot of the skills that I learned when I got my master's in counseling to inform my lawyering and can't imagine being a lawyer without having that background. And it's. And that's because disciplines like social work or counseling or psychology and even, I mean medical school, like more so than like law school, it has embraced more of this for longer and it's a part of their curriculum. And so really recognizing that there's so much to be learned and that we need people outside of lawyer brains to lean on because yeah, I love having social workers there to help support, support my clients. And also equally, I love that after, you know, the tough court experience, after we talk with the client make sure that they understand what happened. You know, make sure, to the extent that we're able, that they're, like, going to be okay in the near future and know to reach out if they're not. That all of that conversation happens. Then once the client leaves, then it becomes to, like, pull back the curtain on a client. Then it becomes the social worker and I talking to the law student, like, are you okay about with everything that happened and processing through that? And then when the law student goes away, then it's me and the social worker, and I'm like, man, how did we just get through all of that? And it's because I don't want my clients to be taking care of me or my law students to be taking care of me. But I need that, like, person where I have a mutual relationship, where there is a social worker there that at the end of a tough day, you know, she can help take care of me. And in turn, I help take care of her too. But it's like, I need my support person to be able to have the ripple effect. So I'm not putting that need for support on someone that it certainly would not align with my values as a trauma informed lawyer to be asking any of my clients or my students to be the person supporting me.
>> Myrna McCallum : Yeah, I mean, peer support, I'm behind that 100%. We have to look at how we do intentional debriefing and how we support each other in a way that's very intentional and very specific. Right. I love that we're aligned. And. And honestly, when I started to read your draft, because I didn't get through the entire paper, I was like, I felt validated. I thought, man, everything Natalie's talking about is exactly what I do, or it, there or it's a variation of what I do. And it felt really validated. And I'm always like, pat myself on the back, particularly because I have no background in psychology or social work. All I wanted to do was be a cutthroat lawyer with no feeling. And so every time I read these things, I think, man, I've come a long way. I'm pretty proud of myself, in bringing, like, humanity to my practice. But before we go, let's talk a little bit about the paper that you're writing. Is it going to be published? When's it going to be published? Can we watch for it? Where can we look for it? You tell me.
>> Natalie Netzel: Yeah, I don't have the exact timeline, but I know that my draft is due on January 5th. So I will be, writing. So I imagine it's going to come out some point in the spring.
>> Myrna McCallum : And is the working title still going to be how how we teach is how they'll practice the connection between trauma informed pedagogy, supervision and lawyering?
>> Natalie Netzel: Yes, that is, that is the working title. And so it's going to be published in the American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy and the Law. that should be coming out sometime this spring. And it's part of an issue related to their symposium on clinical legal education. And they specifically in their call were looking for papers that had to do with trauma and trauma informed lawyering. So I am hopeful that it'll be out sometime this spring. And yeah, the focus is really on how do we teach law students in a trauma informed way. So then it becomes second nature because they've experienced what trauma informed teaching is like. So it just becomes second nature for them to go and be trauma informed lawyers. And then how might that improve this justice system that I say in quotes that like so desperately needs to be changed?
>> Myrna McCallum : Awesome. Okay, so when it is published, you have to let me know so I could share it on all my social media channels. This has been a really awesome conversation, Natalie.
>> Natalie Netzel: Thank you so much. And I am honored to hear that like, you reading my paper was validating for you because this conversation and like the alignment here is certainly I feel seen in my own work hearing that from you. So just thank you so much for your voice and your expertise and your passion and the call that you are putting out to us. you know, hopefully more of us academics can, you know, really respond to that call. So it's just been a total honor. Thank you so much, Myrna.
>> Myrna McCallum : All right, that's my episode for today, folks. I sure hope you enjoyed this conversation with Natalie. I know I did. It inspires me. If you're a legal educator, I hope it inspires you. If you're a law society, A law society, school law society. I hope it's opening your mind, getting you to think about all the possibilities and how we can become a world that is producing trauma informed lawyers.
>> Natalie Netzel: Right.
>> Myrna McCallum : Like that's the goal, that's the objective. as always, if you have any feedback, any comments, questions, you want to give me a rave review, just go to Apple podcast, give me a review, leave me a A rating. Same with Spotify. If you want to reach out to me, I'm, at the TIL podcast on Twitter. You can find me on LinkedIn using my name and of course Instagram. At the trauma Inform Lawyer. This episode was recorded on the unseated ancestral and traditional territory of the Tsleil-Waututh people. All right, until next time, folks. Take care of yourselves.