Trauma in the Law

This forthcoming seminar will examine the relationship of trauma to both the theory and the practice of law.

It will begin by examining the science of trauma (including common misconceptions); highlighting the resources available in school, the profession, and the broader community; and discussing how to recognize both ongoing traumatization and continued trauma.

Through legal and scientific materials, it will then explore how the law of yesterday and today gets trauma right and wrong, including how law recognizes, manages, mitigates, inflicts, and perpetuates trauma; examples may include the evolution of claims for purely emotional harm, damages for emotional distress, determinations of credibility, and opportunities for restorative justice.

The course will then turn to specific scenarios in the practice of law that might implicate trauma, including a lawyer’s primary trauma (that is, trauma related to their own past experiences), a client’s trauma, a witness’s trauma, an adversarial party’s trauma, a lawyer’s vicarious trauma (that is, trauma related to the experiences of their clients), and collective trauma. For each, it will discuss how a lawyer might appropriately, sensitively, effectively, and ethically perceive and navigate the scenario. This will include recognizing and managing biases that may have developed from trauma.

Finally, the course will examine steps that law and the legal profession might take in the future to better reconcile with contemporary and scientifically grounded understandings of trauma.