Jill Family on Lindsay Harris and Hillary Mellinger’s, Asylum Attorney Burnout and Secondary Trauma  

It is tough providing legal services to immigrants.  President Trump made it especially tough.  Jill Family in Jotwell reviews a discussion of the burnout of asylum attorneys in Lindsay Harris and Hillary Mellinger’s, Asylum Attorney Burnout and Secondary Trauma, 56 Wake Forest L. Rev. 733 (2021).  

Professor Family’s bottom line:

“The authors recognize that their work is the beginning of a conversation and that their research does not answer all questions about the mental well-being of asylum attorneys.  Because this study is the first of its kind, it does not measure whether attorneys were worse off under the Trump administration. It does, however, provide us with information about how these 700 asylum attorneys fared during the Trump administration, and the attorneys are not “alright.” The responses to the survey’s free-form question included this one:

I have decided to quit law altogether. It’s impossible to deal with the financial crush of serving a low-income population AND cope with the secondary trauma. I’ve lost my appetite for the law altogether after this shit show area of law. I have no faith in justice or the law anymore.

Harris and Mellinger deserve kudos for identifying a problem and starting the conversation on how to turn things around.”

KJ