Mrs Georgina Patel1, Associate Professor Katey Thom1, Professor Kate Diesfeld1, Professor Brian McKenna1, Associate Professor Nick Garrett1, Professor Khylee Quince1, Dr Anja Vorster1, Ms Madeline Hayward1
1AUT, Auckland, Aotearoa / New Zealand
Biography:
Georgina Patel is the lead researcher of the Law in Distress project. She is a research associate at AUT, working with the Faculty of Law and Faculty of Health and Environmental Sciences. Georgina has practiced in both family and criminal law. Prior to undertaking this project she was working in Auckland as a family lawyer for a private practice law firm, having started her career as a junior Crown Prosecutor. While in practice she completed her LLM(Hons) writing a dissertation about indirect trauma and its impact on criminal lawyers.
Abstract:
The data from our research shows a crisis of wellbeing among New Zealand lawyers that needs urgent attention. The majority of lawyers surveyed suffered high to extremely high levels of: indirect/vicarious trauma, burnout, depression, anxiety, stress, substance abuse, and moral distress/injury – a novel issue and key focus for this presentation. This is the first research considering these issues for New Zealand lawyers.
Data will be presented from a survey of 379 lawyers and interviews with 49 lawyers. The survey included 56 standardised questions: both validated psychological assessment measures and other non-validated questions. The interviews (67 hours) expanded on the survey and discussed risk-mitigation strategies. University ethics approval was obtained for all aspects of the research.
The survey data was analysed by biostatisticians. Interviews were conducted by the lead researcher. Data from the interviews and free-text survey responses was analysed by two independent researchers using Nigel King’s Template Analysis.
This is the first study to consider moral distress/injury in relation to lawyers. We developed a specific scale to assess moral distress, finding that moral distress is a significant cause of distress for New Zealand lawyers and underpins other aspects of work-related distress.
The research conclusions are that the legal profession needs to address the impacts of work-related distress for individual lawyers and the clients and justice systems they serve by:
Building support resources and professional
supervision;
Building knowledge of trauma at
work;
Transforming professional cultural in law; and
Calling for systemic change in the justice system.