Family law is among the most emotionally-charged legal practice areas. When handling a divorce, an attorney is obligated to learn deeply personal information about their clients: every detail of the couple's finances, as well as intimate details about why the marriage fell apart, how they're handling the breakup, how their children are faring. It's information that people often don't share even with their closest friends, but something an attorney is required to get up close and personal with.

Clients' heartaches, fights, anxiety and pain become central to the daily work of a family law attorney, and without solid coping skills and healthy boundaries, it's easy to absorb that pain yourself. But much as a doctor takes precautions to avoid catching their patients' illnesses, an attorney must take precautions to avoid catching their clients' stressors.

'Don't Row the Boat'

Other attorneys have asked me, "How can you even do divorces?" because they know the emotional temperature can be scorching. But I've devised a set of strategies to protect myself and others in my firm from taking the work home with them, and suffering from burnout. The advice I give my staff is, "Don't row the boat."

This philosophy is almost the opposite of the phrase, "We're in the same boat." While you may, in fact, feel a great deal of compassion for your client and fully understand the legal contours of their struggle, it's crucial to remember you're not a buddy, you're not a therapist, and you're not in the same boat.

The attorney's best role is to teach clients how to appropriately manage the conflict themselves, rather than trying to step in and manage it for them. To continue the metaphor, it's better to remain standing on the dock, where you have a wider field of vision. From that vantage point, you can safely and warmly point clients in the direction they need to row, rather than getting in and grabbing an oar yourself.

When you get into a boat with a client, you lack the clear separation required to give an impartial, factual view of their situation from a legal perspective. You are getting into the boat with a client and rowing alongside them when you adopt their problems as your own: worrying about their children, their finances, their fights, their family, so much that it may keep you up at night. If you step out of the lawyer role and into a role more like that of a friend or confidante, it can feel almost as if the divorce is happening to you, and then you too will be rowing down the river of their problems.

Guiding the action at a safe, healthy distance from the personal conflict between warring spouses doesn't mean being cold or distant. In fact, the most compassionate and professional application of your role and your legal knowledge is to give clients the real analysis that helps them in the long run, rather than giving them the comforting statements and solace they may want to hear. By giving the soundest legal advice, you are being compassionate, and you are helping clients learn to row for themselves.