The Trauma-Informed Lawyer

What I Wish I Would Have Learned in Law School

Episode Summary

This episode introduces you to your host Myrna McCallum and what inspired her to transform her approach to lawyering and how she became the trauma-informed lawyer.

Episode Notes

This episode introduces lawyers to the education they didn't know they needed to become effective, compassionate and relational advocates.

Episode Transcription

MYRNA MCCALLUM: I’m Myrna McCallum, Métis-Cree lawyer, and passionate promoter of trauma-informed lawyering. Welcome to my new podcast, the Trauma-Informed Lawyer brought to you in partnership with the Canadian Bar Association. 

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, challenging you to critically reflect on your personal behaviours, 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. 

This podcast comes to you from the traditional, unceded territory of the Squamish, Tsleil-Waututh, and Musqueam People. 

Hello everyone, and welcome to episode 1 of the Trauma Informed Lawyer Podcast. I’m your host, Myrna McCallum. Thank you for listening. I created this podcast to educate, inform, and inspire lawyers, and all interested listeners. Although I originally had law students, lawyers, and judges in mind when I thought about this podcast and who I wanted it to speak to, really, it’s for everyone. Especially those who’ve worked inside the court room or with police services, advocacy organizations, and just anyone committed to access to justice. 

So, I went to law school for a couple of reasons. One was I knew pretty early on that I would likely become a lawyer. It was all that I wanted from the time I was about sixteen. I had watched an episode of “Man Alive” and there was an episode with an Indigenous guy being interviewed by the host, which of course captured my attention because I never saw Indigenous people on TV. This fellow was being interviewed about his experience with the justice system. The host had asked him to share his experience and perception of the justice system and this young Indigenous guy said “it was a white man who arrested me, a white man who defended me, a white man who sentenced me to prison, and a white man who locked the door when I was on the inside. It wasn’t until that moment when I arrived on the inside that I finally saw my own people.” I just knew then if it was possible for me to become a lawyer, I was absolutely going to do that. As I got a little older and I started to watch lawyer shows, one thing I noticed about lawyers is that they were all kind of cut-throat, and no one really gave a damn about anybody and it was all about strategy. It was all about, you know that phrase ‘there’s no crying in baseball’ – it was kind of like there is no crying in the practice of law. That was really attractive to me. I didn’t want to deal with people’s emotions, I just didn’t want to have to console anyone or help anybody who was having an emotional break. I know that probably sounds hilarious, however, I had a lot of history with trauma and as a young girl I was quite shut down and quite angry. The last thing I wanted was to be around anyone’s emotions because I couldn’t even handle my own. So, I thought law looks so attractive to me right now. Then I got into it and the curriculum seemed to mirror a lot of what I understood law to be, or at least how you approach the practice of it. Definitely not holistic, identifying issues not really identifying people. The focus was on legal issues. It wasn’t on individuals; it wasn’t on people; it wasn’t how people were experiencing the crises they were in, or the trouble or challenges that their legal issues were bringing them. And that was awesome. Previously I had no interest in criminal law, however I really needed to get over my fear of public speaking, and I really wanted to learn how to be a litigator. And more importantly, I wanted to serve Indigenous People, and where better to than my home community. So, I went back to Northern Saskatchewan and I practiced criminal law. What I discovered was in a criminal court room the whole range of human suffering will meet you there. I was not prepared for that. I didn’t know how to deal with people in crisis. Emotional crisis, people who looked to me to rescue them, and really just sometimes do the impossible. It was really quite the experience and I learned quickly, particularly as a crown in the sexual assault cases involving children, that I was really missing some very critical information and education on how to engage with people who were experiencing trauma. So first off, how to identify when someone is experiencing trauma as opposed to immediately going to my default which is ‘oh, you can’t answer my question’ or ‘it’s taking you ten minutes’ or ‘you have to keep looking away, you must be lying.” Really leaving that thought process and approach behind, I just knew I had to engage differently. I had to dig deep and find the soft parts of me, and pull on empathy, and pull on the teachings really of my great grandparents, my "chapan"/my great-grandmother, and learn how to become comfortable with silence and patient while someone tells me a story. To just show someone respect, if respect means not looking at them when they’re talking to me about something quite humiliating and devastating, or just giving them the space they need to say what they have to say. 

As the years went on and I became an adjudicator in the Indian Residential School Claims Process, I was required to essentially examine people and really take them back to a time and a place that I’m sure not one of them ever wanted to go back to.  Our legal processes were never created to be trauma-informed, in fact in my view I think they are the opposite. They are quite traumatizing. As I was examining people and witnesses all of their trauma and pain and shame and heartbreak first-hand, I had to learn really quickly how to be different. How to do what I had to do in a way that afforded them some protection from the traumatizing process that we were all in while still maintaining neutrality. I started to adapt my approach and learned how to do my job in a way that was not so reactive, intimidating, disrespectful, humiliating, and traumatizing. That really is where I began to learn about trauma-informed lawyering before I even ever heard the words trauma-informed lawyering. 

Since that time, I’ve learned a lot about myself. So, what did I learn about myself? A couple of things. One is I learned that if I really wanted to help people as opposed to harm people, I needed to really embrace a relational approach to the practice of law, which means that all the stuff that I loved and thought was awesome in the beginning, in terms of being cut-throat, cold, or rigid and narrow, that was not going to work anymore. I had to not look at people and see only legal issues. I needed to see exactly who they were, and I had to make space for their emotions and become comfortable in feeling uncomfortable. Really embrace aspects that are not necessarily natural for me. Like, this will sound terrible, but being patient and sensitive and empathetic when someone is raging or wailing or whatever it may be. So that is one key thing. 

The other key thing is that we should all know about vicarious trauma and how repeatedly putting ourselves in the pathway of people who have experienced significant trauma could really harm us if we haven’t dealt with our own histories of trauma, our own pain, if we’ve got unresolved stuff still kind of simmering somewhere inside, all of that stuff will come to the surface after you’ve had enough time with people who’ve experienced trauma. And I say you have to get ahead of it as soon as you know it. I really wish that before I went into the IAP, that someone would have pulled me aside and said hey, we have some stuff you need to take care of before you do this work because this work is going to test you like you’ve never been tested. And you know, as a result, it nearly destroyed me because I wasn’t prepared for the trauma that I was going to not only be exposed to but be reminded of in my own past. Vicarious trauma, we all need to hear about it. We need to learn about it. It’s critical that we know early on what we need to do to safeguard our mental health so that the work we love to do doesn’t destroy us or drive us away from the practice of law. I don’t want to ever see another lawyer go through what I went through and what I know others have gone through, just because they love their job, they love helping, advocating, listening, and trying to deliver some semblance of justice for people who experience significant harms and injustices by Canadian law and policy, or the behaviours of others. 

I want you to think about why you went to law school. Why you became and advocate, or a front-line worker. In your chosen profession or practice area consider how often you are met with an individual who has experienced recent trauma, or an individual who has brought their anxieties, anger and fears to your door. How did you respond to their emotions? Did you ignore their emotional state? Did you feel prepared or equipped to respond? Do you wish you would have said something or done something different in the way you chose to respond? Do the emotions of others make you feel uncomfortable? Knowing what you know about how often you are required to navigate various legal processes with persons who are in emotional distress, or who’ve experienced traumatic events, what do you wish you would have learned in law school to prepare you to respond to the pain, and the rage, and the fears which usually accompany our clients and their legal issues? Because we can’t compartmentalize those things. When people show up, we can’t just look at them as their legal issue and view them in that very narrow light. People show up as their whole selves, and their whole selves are quite complex. I believe we, as lawyers, ought to be able to recognize a whole complicated messy person, rather than just focusing on a very single, narrow legal issue and ignoring everything else. 

This podcast will fill the educational gap we’ve all experienced and help you learn, now, what you should have learned then, about trauma, trauma-informed advocacy, vicarious trauma, and how to protect your mental health so you and your career can go the distance. 

Alright, so that’s my first show folks! I hope you enjoyed it, and I hope that you will come back for more! Join me next week for my illuminating interview with Gabor Maté who is a world-renowned expert on trauma and addiction. Thanks so much for listening.