With a Little Help from My Friends: Managing Stress in a Hostile Political Environment with Assistance from Non-Lawyers

Go Back

Session Type: AALS Programs

Session Capacity: N/A

Location: N/A

Room: Salon 3

Floor: Third Floor

The current administration continues to take actions and announce policies adverse to the communities our clinics serve, and we live in a time in which bad news abounds. The perpetual negativity and constant uncertainty of what is to come only add to the stress that we already feel as clinicians serving vulnerable client populations. We are called on to help our students navigate and emotionally cope with these pressures while grappling ourselves with how to respond to the changing landscape of legal needs, often ignoring the impact on our own mental, physical, and spiritual health.

Taking an interdisciplinary approach, this panel aims to explore the ways in which the hostile political and social environment impacts our teaching, as well as our and our students’ work on cases. Our panel will include clinicians working in areas of the law that have been heavily impacted by the administration's policies and clinicians experienced in directing multi- and inter-disciplinary clinics and centers. The presentation will focus on identifying professions not traditionally involved in clinical work to develop self-care models that can be used in any clinic or practice. We will focus on why it matters for clinicians to teach and practice self-care, conduct an interactive demonstration of how a self-assessment tool might help participants evaluate the extent to which they and/or their students are being impacted by these external stressors, identify strategies for minimizing the effects of stressors, and provide concrete examples of the various ways other professions can assist legal clinicians both with self-care and teaching self-care to students.