“Lying” Clients and the Students Who Represent Them: Helping Students Understand Why Clients May Mislead, Provide Mistruths, or Otherwise Fabricate

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Session Type: Concurrent Sessions

Session Capacity: N/A

Location: N/A

Room: Union Square 15&16

Floor: Fourth Floor

As clinicians, we are committed to helping our students engage in empathic, non-judgmental representation. When students discover that their clients have told them stories that are inconsistent with credible evidence or when a client’s story “changes,” students often quickly assume that the client lied to them and feel personally affronted. In such moments, we often help students understand what unintentional behavior may have driven the inconsistency—that the client may have misremembered or have been confused because of the impact of trauma or other memory challenges. This kind of analysis is, of course, critical to engaging in empathic, client-centered, and zealous representation. However, what is sometimes missing from classroom teaching or from these supervision discussions is a more in-depth and nuanced discussion about clients who intentionally present mistruths or fabricate facts or stories. The word “lying,” in and of itself, tells us very little about what specific behavior has occurred, and fails to capture the strategy that may be motivating a client. While lawyers are strategic about when and how they share information and what facts they disclose in the context of advocacy, we as clinicians often fail to help students understand that so, too, are clients.
This session is designed to give clinicians teaching and supervision tools to frame how to explore the complex and multi-definitional term “lie,” to help them non-judgmentally help students explore what may motivate a client to intentionally present a mistruth, and to engage in a more nuanced understanding of what “lies” are. This session is further designed to help clinicians assist their students better navigate and depersonalize moments when clients “lie” through a lens of empathy.