What is Professional SuperVision for lawyers?
What is professional supervision for lawyers?
Law can be a challenging and rewarding career. However, no area of law is immune from heightened emotions, stress, and responsibility. From the graphic nature of criminal law, highly emotionally charged family law, the time deadlines and money of commercial and conveyancing to the grief or fear of death/ sickness in Wills and Estates; the lawyer shares proximity to people and clients undergoing stressful experiences.
Often these traumas take on a successive, cumulative nature and are not one-off events. All practice areas of law take their toll and are manifested to some degree, at some point, by the lawyer.
There are many stressors in law: heavy workloads, administrative and financial pressures, public accountability, client accountability (direct customer/ client, employer, or the wider landscape of the law), limited resources, billable hours, the risk of complaint and reporting. The adrenaline hit can be exciting and fulfilling but the juggling act can be exhausting, confusing, fraught with danger and can lead to a lawyer feeling alone and anxious at the very least. It is well documented that lawyers suffer from higher levels of distress, depression, and anxiety than the general population. - There are many definitions of professional supervision. In the next few posts we will explore some of them.
“Supervision interrupts practice. It wakes us up to what we are doing. It acts as an irritant interrupting comfort stories of our practice and facilitating the creation of new stories”.
Deirdre May, originally from Scotland, is an admitted and practising solicitor in rural NSW, Australia of nearly 20 years. She is also a trained a professional supervisor for lawyers of all ages, stages and practice areas. 😊
Your ability to participate in supervision is not confined by geography with the options of online or telephone supervision as well as face to face supervision.
✅Want to know more? DM or email deirdre.eaglesupervision@gmail.com
definition and quote used in post - Sheila Ryan, (2004) Vital Practice. Portland, UK: Sea Change Publications.
