We commonly see that legal firms understand their staff need to be better equipped to support clients who present as emotionally charged due to the vulnerable nature of their circumstances and the potential impact their matter could have on their lives. Staff can feel ill-equipped to communicate effectively with these individuals, unable to respond appropriately to clients presenting in a heightened (heavily emotional) state of crisis, and can personally be heavily impacted. Lawyers at firms can feel that if they learned some key skills in how to respond appropriately to highly emotional clients whilst also caring for themselves, they can better service the clients, better help keep their clients safe, and also reduce the emotional load they feel (potentially leading to heightened levels of burnout).
Veretis Legal Psychology has previously been engaged to provide a series of in person and virtual training sessions to a number of the teams within firms. Series of workshops can concentrate on helping staff de-escalate emotional situations, communicate effectively with individuals from diverse backgrounds and cultures, and positive self-care strategies. Participants have been actively engaged in the sessions through providing their perspectives/experiences, working together to form self-care strategies, and reflect on strategies they had utilised in their practice between sessions.
All webinars are filmed by Veretis Legal Psychology with a 1-page summary handout also developed. These pieces of collateral can be provided to the firm to be hosted on their company intranet to so that staff could come back and refresh their understanding of the content and strategies provided.
As the facilitator was a registered solicitor in addition to being a psychologist, the 10 hours of workshops counted towards participant’s CPD points under the classification of Professional Skills (PS).