Anonymous piece highlights challenges, including vicarious trauma, faced by legal aid asylum lawyers
The Law Society last Friday published a first-person piece from an anonymous immigration solicitor about the pressures of working on immigration and asylum legal aid cases.
Image credit: UK GovernmentYou can read the article online here. It will be of interest to many readers and members of EIN.
As highlighted recently in a report by the Young Legal Aid Lawyers (YLAL), vicarious trauma is just one of the challenges that asylum practitioners face.
The immigration solicitor in the Law Society piece says: "I've definitely suffered from vicarious trauma. For me, it came from empathising with people who have been through horrific things and drafting witness statements about their experiences. It's really hard to protect yourself. Especially when you work with a vulnerable client base and you're under pressure to stop them from being returned to their country where they will be tortured again or even killed."
The article describes the daily stresses and strains of being an immigration and asylum lawyer – a job that is "very reactive" and exciting at times, but one that is beset with plenty of delays, frustrations and unpredictable deadlines.
It also notes the additional challenges caused by the way in which the immigration and human rights sector is portrayed by the media and government ministers.
"It's made us in the profession come closer together and spurred us on, but it's also had an impact on our stress levels. It's unacceptable that government ministers have called us 'activist lawyers' and accused us of abusing the law. We're not granting anyone asylum: the Home Office is. We're not stopping flights: the judges are. We're using the law in a lawful way to protect our clients. To have your profession lambasted when all you've been doing is working hard and trying to do something useful, has taken a toll on us," the solicitor said.
While the solicitor adds that the firm they work for now offers support to staff, it is not extensive enough. They stated: "As a legal aid provider, there's not a lot of money left over to put resources in place to support individual employees. It's a consistent complaint that there's not enough pastoral care. People find the billable targets difficult, people are tired and this is how it's always been. I know people who have left the firm because they can't handle it anymore."
For more on the issues raised in the Law Society piece, the Immigration Law Practitioners Association (ILPA) has a well-being resources hub here that contains links to many useful and helpful resources for legal professionals.