Empathy: an essential element of legal practice or ‘never the twain shall meet’?

Westaby, Chalen; Jones, Emma

doi:10.1080/09695958.2017.1359615

Cited by 20 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 48 publications

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“…Discourses of law and legal practice traditionally exclude emotion. 114 However, a growing body of literature draws attention to this oversight, for example in work on legal ethics, 115 and the complex emotional labour undertaken in practice. 116 Oakley and Vaughan, for example, contrast the archetypal individualistic, rational view of a lawyer assumed by regulators, with the reality of the 'relational and situational vulnerabilities of corporate lawyers.'…”

Section: Relational Attributes Emotion and The Desire For A New Apprmentioning

confidence: 99%

Great expectations: millennial lawyers and the structures of contemporary legal practice

Bleasdale

Francis

2020

Legal stud.

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This paper presents the findings of the first empirical study of the experiences of young lawyers who have entered an increasingly uncertain profession following a highly competitive education and recruitment process. These ‘millennial lawyers’ are framed by a narrative of ‘difference’. This ‘difference’ is commonly articulated negatively and as a challenge to organisational and professional norms. However, our findings suggest a more complex reality. In its synthesis of work on structure and agency, with the temporal focus required by generational sociology, this paper advances an original approach to the analysis of organisational and professional change within contemporary legal practice. Drawing on new empirical research, it demonstrates that although our sample shares many field-level expectations, there is also considerable stress, unhappiness and discomfort. This is generated by a complex interaction between the lawyers’ expectations of practice, and the structuring properties of the field. Thus, the capacity for organisational and professional change is more comprehensively understood within a temporal frame. This paper challenges academic and professional paradigms of generational change within the legal field. It concludes with recommendations for legal educators and the profession which foreground the complexity of millennial lawyers’ expectations of practice.

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Section: Relational Attributes Emotion and The Desire For A New Apprmentioning

confidence: 99%

Great expectations: millennial lawyers and the structures of contemporary legal practice

Bleasdale

Francis

2020

Legal stud.

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“…In terms of TJ, it can be seen that greater engagement with affect has a direct relationship to its key principles and research focus, offering the possibility for a higher UK profile and a more widespread acknowledgment of the importance of wellbeing. However, perhaps understandably given the wide scope of the LETR, there was little detailed discussion on what incorporating affective competencies would actually mean in practice, despite both emotional intelligence and empathy both being referred to (Jones, 2018;Westaby and Jones, 2017). Whether it was this lack of detail, an unwillingness or inability to engage with the affective domain in depth, or simply a sense that this domain could be incorporated, implicitly, within skills such as communication, team work and client care, there is no explicit reference to affect within the final statements of competency adopted by both the SRA (solicitors) and the BSB (barristers).…”

Section: Translating Theory Into Practice: Tj and The Uk Legal Profesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Whether it was this lack of detail, an unwillingness or inability to engage with the affective domain in depth, or simply a sense that this domain could be incorporated, implicitly, within skills such as communication, team work and client care, there is no explicit reference to affect within the final statements of competency adopted by both the SRA (solicitors) and the BSB (barristers). The BSB does refer to "empathy" as an element of client care (BSB, 2015) but this concept itself has both affective and cognitive aspects, with the latter often prevailing within its conceptualisation amongst legal professionals (Westaby and Jones, 2017). Therefore, at present, despite the importance of the affective domain being acknowledged, this does not appear to have filtered into the regulation of legal practice in the UK.…”

Section: Translating Theory Into Practice: Tj and The Uk Legal Profesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Dissolving the stiff upper lip: Opportunities and challenges for the mainstreaming of therapeutic jurisprudence in the United Kingdom

Jones

Kawałek

2019

International Journal of Law and Psychiatry

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Although therapeutic jurisprudence ("TJ") is increasingly well-established internationally, particularly within the United States of America ("US"), to date it remains relatively unacknowledged within the United Kingdom ("UK"). This article will explore the opportunities presented within contemporary UK society for the greater promotion, and eventual mainstreaming, of TJ. It will also consider the challenges faced during this process and how best to overcome these. Its first key area of focus will be upon the potential role of legal education in the UK in educating law students (and academics) about TJ, considering which approaches are likely to be most effective in incorporating TJ perspectives, at what stage this should occur and to what extent TJ is likely to impact on the existing curricula at a time when proposed changes relating to entry into the legal profession are heavily influencing the work of Law Schools. The article will then move on to consider the receptiveness of the UK legal profession to the TJ paradigm in light of recent attempts to move to a competency-based approach to practice and to reconceptualise professionalism to meet the challenges of increasing fragmentation and corporatisation. The third key area it will explore is the UK's recent plans to reintroduce problem-solving courts ("PSCs") into its criminal justice system. The authors will discuss the downfall of the six UK Drug Court ("DC") pilots originally established in 2005 theorising upon their failures and reflecting upon whether the current UK criminal justice system is truly able to support a fresh round of PSC initiatives. The article will end with recommendations for ways in which the international TJ community should begin the process of mainstreaming TJ within the UK. It will conclude that there are currently significant opportunities to be utilised, but that this requires significant commitment and mobilisation amongst existing TJ scholars and practitioners.

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“…Within the growing field of law and emotion, empathy has been discussed as involving a risk for bias (Abrams, 2010;Bandes, 2009;Nussbaum, 1996). However, many scholars in this field have shown how empathy enhances objectivity and professionalism among legal actors (Bandes, 2009;Roach et al, 2005;Westaby and Jones, 2018;Wettergren and Bergman Blix, 2016). Among other things, empathy is considered to be crucial both when assessing and when anticipating people's acts and rationales and when managing one's own and others' emotions in court (Wettergren and Bergman Blix, 2016).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Drizzling sympathy: Ideal victims and flows of sympathy in Swedish courts

Törnqvist

2021

International Review of Victimology

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By connecting sociological perspectives on sympathy with the concept of ‘ideal victims’, this article examines how sympathy forms and informs legal thought and practices in relation to victim status in Swedish courts. In its broadest sense, sympathy can be understood as an understanding and care for someone else’s suffering and in many contexts victimization and sympathy are densely entangled. However, since ideals of objectivity and neutrality prevail in court, emotional norms are narrow and sympathy is met with suspicion. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Swedish courts, I argue that while sympathetic feelings are mostly backgrounded, they are still a central part of court proceedings and deliberations. The main findings suggest that prosecutors and victims’ counsel use ‘sympathy cues’ to evoke the judges’ concern for the complainants and to facilitate their empathic imagination of the complainant’s situation. In relation to this finding, judges engage in emotion work in order to not be affected by these sympathy cues. The study also shows that in encounters with ‘ideal victims’ who perform a playful resistance to their victimization, legal actors show sympathy more freely and accept moments of temporary relief from the normal interaction order in court.

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Empathy: an essential element of legal practice or ‘never the twain shall meet’?

Cited by 20 publications

References 48 publications

Great expectations: millennial lawyers and the structures of contemporary legal practice

Great expectations: millennial lawyers and the structures of contemporary legal practice

Dissolving the stiff upper lip: Opportunities and challenges for the mainstreaming of therapeutic jurisprudence in the United Kingdom

Drizzling sympathy: Ideal victims and flows of sympathy in Swedish courts

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