Trauma-Informed Legal Practice

Trauma-Informed Legal Practice is trauma-sensitive work with some of the most vulnerable and impacted people. Being trauma-informed has benefits for the clients being represented and for the legal practitioners performing the representation. Being trauma-informed means promoting safety for clients, bearing witness to the harms and hurts they have endured, and understanding how best to represent someone who has endured trauma in their life. Being trauma-informed also ensures that hearing trauma in the course of developing a client’s criminal case does not result in absorbing that trauma secondarily, thereby preventing against vicarious trauma.