Chapter 11 - Burnout

Defenders reflect on the psychological toll of public defense on their lives and health.

How do you cope with the stresses of the job?

Defenders give a myriad of answers to this question. A number of Defenders note how they at first dealt with the stresses of the job by imbibing. One Defender states: “When I was like a baby attorney, I was drinking too much. I was drinking a lot. Then as I got more mature and realized that: a) I don’t have the money for that anymore; and b) my waistline couldn't handle that, then I cut alcohol out and started doing a lot of yoga, trying to refocus my energies on finding happier ways to cope.” Another Defender states: “Consuming substances that I probably shouldn't be consuming. A lot of happy hours…. And then there came a time where I realized that I needed another outlet, so I started going to therapy….” Notes another Defender: “Drinking. I do less of that now that I'm a dad. I should be sober more than I'm not. But there was drinking.” Some Defenders still drink, although responsibly. One Defender answers: “By drinking a lot…. But I drink a lot with my fellow public defenders. We’re drinking and venting together about all the things that we have to deal with.” Some public defenders went past drinking. One Defender observes:

I mean, sometimes we laugh when we want to cry. Lawyers have a very dark sense of humor. You notice that in law school with your professors and fact patterns, but then when you actually get into this kind of work, lawyers—I don't have a problem with alcohol, but a lot of my colleagues do, unfortunately—they drink. We drink when we win, we drink when we lose. We drink when there's nothing to do…. Alcoholism rates in the legal profession are much higher than in other professions, but in particular public defense. I've heard stories of lawyers passing away because they had a problem with the bottle; and you see things and you hear things about folks, and it's really unfortunate.

Everybody drinks, man; everybody drinks. Some do harder drugs. We're all humans; we're all just a representation of society. This work in particular, it wears on you. I just noticed that we drank a lot….

Many Defenders cope with the stress of the job by taking and going on as much vacation as possible. One Defender remarks: “I take vacation.” Another Defender concurs: “I go on vacation as often as possible.” Another Defender states: “What I established years ago was that after every trial, I would go and take a vacation, I would go to another country. I would travel. I would spend time elsewhere.” Adds another Defender: “I would go on vacations. I made sure that I would schedule my vacations every couple of months or whatever. I was blessed to be able to have family that lived in [another state]. So I would take a long weekend and maybe leave on a Thursday and go to [the other state] with my family and relax.” One Defender gives this answer: “You don't make enough money to actually go on vacations, so what you wind up doing is, like, taking vacation in your house or a family member's house.”

Some Defenders cope by moving around and working at different places. One Defender states: “Not very well at first. I'm a bit of a runner; so when it gets too stressful, I leave. I've learned other ways to cope beyond that, but sometimes it gets hard. So for example, I had a client one time that was terminally ill with cancer and was on Rikers. The court wouldn't let him out; this was the worst situation where the judge and the prosecutor would not let him out. I finally got him out, and then he died very shortly after, like a couple weeks after. Then I had a close family member pass away from cancer the year before, so this was a lot and I was just like, I can't do this. So I quit and went home, [out of New York State,] for a few months. So that's an extreme….” Another Defender shares: “I always cope by moving around. I moved around a good bit…. That's helped me cope with the burnout and the need to switch something up and to change it; the need to inject some energy, some newness; and the need to get off the hamster wheel….”

Other Defenders cope by taking days off work here and there so they can psychologically recoup. One Defender shares: “Sometimes I'll take a wellness day where I just veg out, eat my favorite things, and chill. My favorite thing to do lately has been to have a bed day. You should totally try it. It’s like a day where you really do not leave your bed unless you're using the bathroom. It's great. It's really rejuvenating. It has been very helpful to me….” Another Defender states: “You have to take a day off if you need to. You gotta take mental health days sometimes. My wife and I would joke that I would have an annual breakdown day; and I would just have to take the day off. I would wake up and be like, it is too much. It was like once a year when I’m like, I can't handle it. I can't handle it. I gotta take the day off. So I think taking time off is important.” Adds another Defender: “Sometimes I need to take a mental health day. Not that one day necessarily always helps, but you do what you can to kind of repair yourself and just to keep going.”

Many Defenders cope by talking, venting, and crying to close friends, family members, and trusted colleagues. One Defender states: “There are one or two colleagues, including my best friend, that I will talk with about the work. Sometimes it's hard to talk about it with family because they don't necessarily understand; but sometimes it's good to speak to a friend or colleague. I might vent to them about the day; it could have been a bad day at trial when you're on trial…. I deal with the stresses of the job by venting. I do vent sometimes with family….” Another Defender notes: “At the time, I leaned on those around me more so. I had a bad day court, I came back and I cursed, I yelled, I vented to my friends. I maybe went for a drink and went to eat, or sometimes I cried. I closed the door, and I had a good old cry fest. I never let anyone in court see me cry; I cry in the office. I run back. I hold it together, I get back to the office, and I commiserate. That's why it's important to always build a support system around you at work….” Answers another Defender: “I talk to my wife. I talk to some friends, but mainly I talk to my wife; she is my sounding board. I'll talk to my younger sister, too; she's an attorney….”

Some Defenders cope by tuning out what is happening in the world. One Defender shares: “I know sometimes I have to publicly or socially detach from what's going on in the world, if that makes sense. If I'm experiencing burnout at work, and I hear about another police shooting [or something else depressing], sometimes I just have to turn the news off and just kind of hide as much as I possibly can until I kind of just get through, until I kind of, like, refill my cup. Then I step back out and I’m like, all right. I'm ready.” Another Defender states: “I stopped reading newspapers. I don't watch [the news on] TV. The reason why I stopped reading the newspaper is because of the fear of reading about the demise of one of my clients, which I’ve had to do before. That shit carries a whole different type of trauma. So I just stopped reading the paper.”

Many Defenders cope by setting strict boundaries between work life and personal life. One Defender states: “I had to make a conscious effort and decision to make sure that I set up some time for just me and nobody else. Turn off the phones, step away from everybody and just focus on me, just to clear my head. I think that is 100% key.” Another Defender states: “I leave work when I stop working. I would say I leave work at work. Obviously if I'm working on a trial, that’s a different matter. I would take that home. But if I actually wasn't working on a trial or expecting to go to trial, then when I am done with work, I am done with work…. My spouse and I are both public defenders. We have a rule that once we come in the door, we're not speaking about work.” Concurs another Defender: “By cutting it off when work hours are over. The only time that I bring the office or clients or anything home is if I'm on trial. If I'm on trial, my client gets me 24-7…. But outside of trial, when five o'clock comes and I leave, I am done. I am done; nothing, no call, nothing to do with work or any of that crap.” Another Defender explains:

I don't bring it home unless I'm on trial. I just don't bring it home. This has been an ongoing conversation with my wife for as long as we've been married. I come home and she asks, “How was your day?” I’m like, “It was fine; it's okay.” I don’t say anything else. And I guess I should appreciate that she would even have interest to keep asking me about my day. (Author laughs) When I say, “It's okay,” and I'm not elaborating on that, I don't really want to talk about it anymore. But then inevitably there's a follow up question: “So I mean, what happened? What'd you do today?” (Author laughs) Okay, that's not what I was talking about. That's not where I want to go….

Along that vein, many Defenders cope by doing fun activities with an eye towards taking their minds off the job. One Defender answers: “A lot of book reading, going to the movies, just things to shut off that part of your brain for a little while and enjoy life. That has been very helpful when it comes down to burnout.” Another Defender states: “I try to do things to make me laugh. So I like to watch a lot of comedies, even if they’re old school. I listen to music, talk on the phone, and hang out with friends. Just anything to decompress.” Another Defender notes: “I'm really into sports, so my head doesn't always have to be thinking of all of this crap. I love movies and all of those kind of things, things that had nothing to do with work. You have to embrace those things and involve yourself in them a lot, so you can maintain your sanity and you don't burn out.” Answers another Defender: “What do I do? I listen to a lot of hip hop music.”

Finally, a few Defenders cope by engaging in physical activities like working out and exercising. One Defender states: “If it's during the day, maybe I go out for a walk and try to clear my mind.” Another Defender shares: “A colleague and I would go to dance class. That was a lot of fun….” States another Defender: “I worked out. Working out was number one. I've always been mindful. I've always worked out. I always believe in preserving mind over everything; I prioritize taking care of me.”

Some more responses:

Defender I coped by having a life outside the job. I coped by setting limits for myself. When I first took the job, I worked ridiculous hours, and I stayed late. And then I started stepping back; and what made me step back was when I adopted my child. I made a promise to that child as follows: “I'm going to be coming home late. You're going to have somebody taking care of you after school. But, I promise I'll be here to spend a couple of hours together during the evening. I promise that when I come home on Fridays, from the time I come home to nine o'clock on Sundays, my time is yours, and only yours.” And I did that.

I was also involved politically. I was doing things in the community; I was doing political work that was outside of the job. Some of my colleagues drowned themselves in the work; they had this conception that they had to sacrifice everything for the job, which I've never thought. That's what's kept me sane; that's why I never got burned out.

Defender Again, I'm fortunate because like I say, when you're doing something that you love—you enjoy it, you’ve studied it, you wanted to do this, this is all you wanted to do—the stress doesn't hit you the same way it hits other people. Sometimes you don't even know what people are talking about when they're really stressed out. I suppose the stresses come before trial; stresses come with the anxiety of not knowing the result. For me, those are the stresses of the job. It's not the typical stresses of the day-in and day-out. I'm never stressed out about that. Like to me, that's the curious part of the job. That's what makes me excited. Or dealing with the clients; that's not the stressful part for me….

Defender I make a point to leave work at work, and I really take the time to have outside interests. I don’t play into office politics. My attitude was, my colleagues are my colleagues. My colleagues are not my friends outside of work. I wasn't that lawyer that went after work drinking or to the bar with colleagues; and that saved me a lot of mental anguish. That saved me from a lot of the office politics and the gossip, because I separated myself from that.

Then there’s my faith. I have a really strong faith, which is necessary sometimes when I look at some of the crimes my clients were accused of. Sometimes, the charges, the crimes alleged is what gets to you. When you are dealing with a father that's accused of molestation and sodomy and rape of his 10-year-old daughter, that shit weighs on your conscience, especially as a mother and as a woman. It hits you in so many different places. So I have faith. I wake up with prayer. I pray before I go out. I pray before I leave my house for the strength just to deal with humans. I wake up with prayer. I go to bed with prayer….

Defender I'm not one of those people who is obsessed with the job. If there's a show about public defenders, I'm probably not going to watch it. I live it. I don't need to see it. If I'm reading a book, it's not going to be a book about public defense, unless it's something specific. There was this interesting book that I just bought about rap lyrics used at trial, because I thought that was a really fascinating subject that I'll read. But other than that, I try to stay away from work-related things….

Defender You gotta have a life outside of the job. That's really important…. When you're a new attorney, you feel like everything's going to fall apart if you're not there. But that’s the thing about our office: it doesn't fall apart because your colleagues are there for you. And that's the other thing: lean on your colleagues when you need to, because we've all been there. We've all been there, so we all understand it. We know the people who game the system and everything like that; but the majority of folks are not like that. So with the friendships and the bonds that you establish, don't be afraid to ask for help when you need help. Take the time off if you need the time off. Remember why you're doing the work and have a life outside of the job.

How real is burnout? Have you ever felt burnt out?

The clear majority of Defenders to answer these questions aver that burnout is very real, and the threat of burnout is a serious problem. One Defender describes burnout this way: “You’re just tired. You just lose your interest in work, and coming to work, and being on time. I can always tell when I'm getting to the point of burnout because I can't get to work on time; like I can't even get to work at the time that I normally come in. And I can’t stay; I just have to get out.” Another Defender states: “It's very real. Burnout will have you neglecting not only yourself, but neglecting your family, neglecting your clients, forgetting your cases. It messes with you, with your total being.” Adds another Defender: “Burnout is real, and it's gangster. It doesn’t give a damn, and it will kick your back in. It's real. It's gangster. It creeps up on you. That's why I said it kicks your back in, because it creeps up on you. One minute you think you have a handle on everything, and next minute you're crumbling.”

Defenders also give reasons for why public defenders experience burnout. One Defender states: “You can’t do this type of work with all the different layers of bullshit that you go through—the judge, the ADAs, the coworkers, the supervisors, the other attorneys, and the police—and not get to feel like, what is this all for? What is this all for? Why am I constantly going home pissed off, crying, upset and all, just to do it again? I feel like every arraignment shift is an opportunity to pick up some new plate of shit. And I hate to paint it that way, but there’s some new shit that happens and you’re like, Really? I didn’t even get over the old plate of shit I got last month. It’s frustrating. It’s extremely exhausting.” Another Defender adds: “The job is—if you care and you work hard—incredibly emotionally taxing, because you witness awful things happening to people day in and day out. A lot of times, you feel like your hands are tied and there’s nothing you can really do; and it’s traumatizing. You work really hard, you’ve got a ton of cases, and you feel like you’re just on this perpetual hamster wheel. It’s easy to grow very tired of that quickly.” Adds another Defender:

Oh God…. First, you have such a really, really important role, a life-changing role; and if you don't stay fresh, you can ruin someone's life. It's exhausting; it’s emotionally exhausting [and it’s] physically exhausting. Trials are exhausting. Winning can be rejuvenating; losing can be devastating. And then there are the little losses daily, and just having to carry other people's very serious emotional trauma that they're going through at the moment. You're meeting them in their moment of total trauma, and you are counseling them through the entire process, a very traumatic process. Even the fucking regular court date is extremely traumatic. Having to go sit in court all day, the waiting, wondering what's going to happen, all of that. So you're just with someone, with multiple people, every day all day, nine to five, doing that.

Many Defenders report feeling burned out. A few share their stories:

Defender Burnout is real for attorneys of color. One time I was representing a young client who I later learned had] got shot in the neck and died. I couldn’t work for the rest of the day. I went out in the hallway and I just lost my shit. I cried. I was talking to him in arraignments [when I had first met him], and you could see from his rap sheet that he had been getting into trouble. I was trying to talk to him to try and see what was going on. And the next court date, he was dead.

This is just a really hard job, because if you can see yourself in your client, and you identify with your clients, it’s difficult…. It’s emotionally taxing to deal with people that look like you that have so many problems. There comes a point where you feel like it’s futile, like nothing you’re doing could really help; and you’re just dealing with shit. You can’t make a difference because you’re getting involved too late. And quite frankly, that’s the reason I moved to a different job, because I felt if I could get involved earlier in the process, I could have more of an impact. I think this job is just hard for people of color. I think for white attorneys, it’s more of an academic exercise for them. They try to identify with our clients; but for me, I look at my clients and I’m like, oh, that could be me. That increases my level of anxiety and distress. I’m more involved in the process, and it’s harder to step away because you feel more responsibility.

So that’s another reason why burnout is real. It gets to be a lot; it gets to be too much. And then after a while, are you just going to not give a fuck? You have a choice to step away and maintain your dignity, or a part of you dies and you say, “I just can’t care as much, because otherwise it will affect my sanity.” When you see Black people in jail all the time, it affects you. You become jaded. I’ve thought about stepping away, and I’ve taken sabbaticals. It’s very real.

Defender Oh, hell yeah, burnout is real. Oh, hell to the yes. I think I felt it the most after George Floyd's death. I think that was a pivotal moment for me. It made me really just want to leave criminal law altogether. There's some point in criminal law where you feel like, even though you get small victories some days, that it's just not enough. The system is just so burdensome, and it just sucks you dry. You feel like there is nothing you can do that will shift that scale to make it a little bit better for the next person coming in. It’s so bleak. And I think when you start thinking, there's nothing I can do that would affect it because it's designed to run this way. It's designed to swallow people whole and just disenfranchise people and marginalize people.

When you start internalizing all of it, it's like, why am I here? Why am I still doing this? You just feel a sense of hopelessness and think that it’s time to go. As for me, when I get that depressed thinking about the system, I try to watch documentaries about people wrongly incarcerated and exonerated, like “The Innocence Files.” Those kinds of shows put the fight back in me. It makes me want to work harder on my case, because I'm like, “I can't let that be my client.”

But burnout is so real. It is so real. It gets to you one day, where you just really feel a sense of hopelessness, like this is some black hole that's sucking the energy out of you and just sucking you dry. And you're not even getting paid enough to deal with all of this stress. I think once you start feeling like that consistently—because sometimes it's just lingering, and I can solve that by going on vacation—it's time to pack it up and go.

Defender I definitely felt burnt out after year three. I think after year three, it finally settled in: I was just a cog in the system, and the best I could do is to make the lives of individuals that came across me better, to make it worthwhile that they met me and had me as an attorney and not someone else. That was the only thing that was getting me through, because I had this pie-in-the-sky idea that I could help change the system or that some of us could get together and change the system. I learned that that wasn’t going to happen.

Defender Oh, it's real…. Like it was bad. I'll tell you one moment where I really understood how bad burnout had gotten me. One time I took a vacation, and I can't remember where—if I went somewhere—or what I did. But I was playing in a work-related basketball league. When I came back for vacation, my game was just way better than what it normally was; it wasn't so up and down. And one of my buddies joked with me and said, “Yeah, you need to go away more often, because you came back serious and ready to play.” And I said, “You know what? There's a lot of things about not being here that accounts for that.” I wasn't away pounding caffeine. The stress and tension levels were walking onto the court with me every time. I realized that the moment that that wasn't the case, I could actually focus and enjoy playing, you know?

I also used to marvel at how you could tell when someone had taken a little break, because they'd come back a little bright-eyed. But what used to scare me was how that bright-eyed-ness would be gone by the end of their first day back.

Burnout is serious because, when you don't recognize it, then all of a sudden you don't understand why you're yelling at your colleagues all the time, or you're yelling at this one or yelling at that one, and why your hands are shaking and why you can’t calm down. It could be dangerous, man. Literally. One thing that scared me to death was that, after I left public defense, one of my former colleagues had a nervous breakdown. Even to this day, I feel like he's not the same dude; he's a beat-down version of himself. He's older, in his sixties; so he's also slowing down because of that as well. But the reason why I say it scared me to death is because out of everybody in that office, I felt his personality and his way of dealing with stress was the most similar to my style of dealing with it. (Author reacts) And I always used to say to people, “I can't be here for more than five years, because I’ll have a stroke.” And then I left; and then a few months later, he had that nervous breakdown. I was like, oh my God. That's exactly what I'm talking about….

Defender It's very real; and it comes in different stages, too. So I've experienced a lot of burnout; like I'm in a stage of burnout again. I experienced burnout when I first started picking up lower-level felonies. Then I experienced burnout when I started picking up higher-level felonies. And then I experienced burnout when I realized like, wait, I can't really afford having kids in New York City. Like what is going on? It's just so many different ways of experiencing burnout, at least to me.

Defender Very real, extremely real. I have it. I have it right now. I felt it for a couple years where I just felt like I wasn't as engaged all the time. I wasn't as energetic. Then last January, I had a sentencing. My client got six months in jail, which of course is by far not the worst sentence I've ever seen or received. Yet everything about it felt unfair. I just felt like it was just too much, and I broke down. I was hysterical. And I went back to the office, and I had a client who was meeting me at the office. I started our meeting, and then I stepped away and then I was hysterical again. I couldn't get it together for 30 minutes to get back to my client who I was meeting with. And I think that's when I first felt it.

It's just this overwhelming feeling that no matter what I do, so many people are still getting screwed. And it just feels like, what's the point? I know we're valuable. I know why we're important. I know that we are sometimes the only thing standing between our client and the system. But every day you don't feel that, and when you just get bad outcome after bad outcome, bad sentence after bad sentence, it's heavy. It weighs on you.

Not all Defenders feel burnout. One Defender answers this way regarding the stresses he/she deals with on the job: “Nothing that a vacation to Costa Rica didn't cure. I love my work in such a way that even though it is a stressful line of work, I don't necessarily feel like it's work. I'm happy to get up and go to work and do my job and interact with my clients and fight for them. I love my job, so no, I have not felt like a real sense of burnout, which is why I think I have been doing this for as long as I have.” Another Defender gives this answer:

I don't know. I mean, this is the only life I know. Everyone else I talk to has complaints, and they're tired of their job. I don't know very many people that don't express having burnout from their job. I don't necessarily think it's unique to our job; I think our job is necessarily unique in that the stakes are very high. That carries a heavy burden with it. That sits very heavily on me, knowing that something you do or you don't do could result in someone losing their liberty. That's a heavy burden to bear. I don't know if I would describe that as burnout, because you feel that from the second you start working. [Whether] it's a day, or if it's 10 years, that feeling is there, and it should be there. I don't know how to lift that. I don't want it lifted, because that keeps me present and it keeps me going. The minute that you don't feel that, I think it's problematic.

Are you able to separate the stresses of the job from your personal life?

This question produced a range of answers. Some Defenders note that they generally are able to separate the stresses of the job from their personal lives. One Defender states: “Yeah, I can. When I'm at work, it's really just about work. I have always been able to compartmentalize. We live in compartments, some of us, and I'm able to have work at work.” Another Defender answers: “Yes. But most of my stresses come from my job, I would say. I don’t have a family or anything like that yet. I would say that most of my stress comes from my job; it’s kind of like my whole life at this point.” Adds another Defender: “Yes. I think I've found ways of [coping]. If I'm going to vent about something at work, I'd vent to a coworker that I trust versus venting to my friends about it. You have to come up with hobbies. You have to actively work against burnout. You have to come up with whatever. I think actually this year before COVID, I was like, this is going to be my year where I get over burnout. I'm going to start swim lessons and I'm going to do cooking lessons. And then boom: COVID. But you really have to come up with some hobbies and do things that are outside of your work.”

Some Defenders find that they became better at separating the two as they got older and more seasoned. One Defender answers: “More and more as I got older.” Another Defender concurs: “Yes. Early on, I do think that things hit pretty close to home and that I did get affected more by each and every story of my clients. But I have been able to sort of learn to distance myself and learn to cope and learn to give as much of my empathy and effort and energy to the job as I can without negatively affecting my own psyche.” Adds another Defender: “I've gotten a lot better at it. There have been times where the stresses of the job have bled into my relationship with my wife, where I'm just really super stressed with work; or [there would be] things that really fuck me up, like a fight with a judge or a fight with an ADA, that would really affect my moods and make me sour. I bring the work home with me a lot, but I try to be conscious of when I'm doing it, and I try not to.”

Some Defenders report that there are times they can separate the two and times they can’t. One Defender answers: “Most of the time. Not all the time, but most of the time I've been able to do so. I think there have been times where if you're experiencing a lot of stress in your personal life, this can be a very hard job to do, depending on what's happening with your cases. But I think for the most part, I've been able to separate the stress from work.” Another Defender shares: “Oh, sometimes, but sometimes you can't; and I think those are the times that people have to really evaluate what they have going on and decide whether they need to take some time. That's what I do. Like last year, I had a lot of family stuff going on. I had an incarcerated family member. My parents had gotten a divorce. Then outside of that, all the stresses and financial stuff that kind of comes along with that. My mother was sick, and my father seemed like he was experiencing some sort of dementia [or something]. It became too much; it all became too overwhelming for me. I had to take time away because I didn’t want it to affect the work that I was doing or to affect my clients in a negative way.” One Defender responds this way:

Not all the time, no. There have been moments I've come back from arraignments and I am just depressed. Like those shifts where no one went home, like you batted a 20 for 20 and everyone was going in because bail was set or they were remanded. It's hard to kind of wash that off before you get home….

And then the news, oh boy. Every time someone gets arrested, I get calls from family members, asking me “Would you represent this person?” And I'll go, “No, I wouldn't represent Harvey Weinstein. He makes too much money.” But if Harvey Weinstein was Joe Blow from down the street and needed a public defender, then yes, I would represent him. So it's never far from people's minds, or your own.

Other Defenders report being unable to separate the stresses of the job from their personal lives. One Defender states: “I try to. I really, really try to. I try to, but I feel like a lot of times, it's a part of me. It’s what I do, it’s what I love to do, and I feel like a lot of the time it will transfer over into my personal life, because it's hard to turn it off.” Another Defender states: “No. It’s hard. I mean, for me, it's someone's life. So I think about it constantly. I think about all my clients, especially the ones who are in really bad situations. Those things weigh on you. Then you come home, and it still weighs on you.” Another Defender answers: “No. I tried, but it was very hard at times. I remember being in Puerto Rico on a beach, talking to a client in Rikers.” Adds another Defender: “Was I able to separate it? Not really. That honestly is what drove me to feel like I needed to do something different, because I just felt like with everything I was seeing and experiencing vicariously through my clients, just so much trauma, so much pain and so much harm being caused through the system, that I couldn't cope. I developed a sleeping problem. It was manifesting in a lot of ways physically. So it was really hard for me to separate the two. I don't think I did that well, either.” One Defender gives this answer:

Absolutely not. I try my best. There are plenty of times where I think about cases. I bring it home. I try not to, but I'm human. And I talk to my wife a lot. She is definitely my sounding board. I talk to my parents as well. My father-in-law is very even-tempered, so I'll talk to him and get his advice about what he thinks. Then I'll try to put it into practice.

But no, I don't think I separate them. I think it's very difficult to do that. If you have the solution, let me know; but I feel like it's very difficult to do that, especially when you care so much....

Defenders describe the act of separating the stresses of the job from the personal as a skill public defenders need to develop. One Defender shares: “Not initially, no. That's another reason why it's important to have your little tribe around you, because it's a skill you have to work on; and you have to be careful, because the other side of separating is you become too separated, too desensitized, too compartmentalized. It's a very, very delicate balance, because you learn to compartmentalize. But there's always going to be some cases that you bring home with you; and I'm not talking about physically. I'm talking about mentally, where you relive it, and it haunts you. I think if you talk to any defense attorney, they have a case that haunts them. And it's just because a lot of time, things happen that are out of your control, and you have to learn how to navigate the feeling of helplessness….” Another Defender adds:

In terms of being able to separate it out, it takes time. It takes skill. Some people are estranged from their family, and their family is their adoptive public defender family at the office. And that's just not limited to the four walls at the office; that bleeds over into court for some people. Some folks you see end up married to folks in the district attorney's office or married to court officers or in relationships with them. We're all human. Some people are married to people in the office. You hear sometimes that people were married, and they end up divorced in the office. All of these things happen. It’s life; it’s a large office. So a lot of different things have happened.

In terms of me personally, I have some very close friends. I have a pretty good relationship with probably 95% of the people that I've come across at the office. But I have to have some separation. In my opinion, some people don't really operate that way; but being able to just not be around lawyers all the time is sometimes, oftentimes, therapeutic in my opinion.

A few more responses:

Defender Sometimes I am better at doing that than others. I will say the longer I do it, I think the better I'm able to…. I'm better able to log, not off necessarily, but like log “down” from the stress at work versus my personal life. I think a part of why I'm not able to just completely separate all the time is because our job interacts with a lot of my personal philosophies. Especially given this time, if you're at all politically conscious and racially conscious—I believe myself to be—then it's hard to completely divorce the two, because anything that's going on in regular life, especially politically, you’ll think about a case or think about this kind of interaction or think about things that happen—because the system is what it is—and see that it leads to what we see at work. Or people are so flippant and blasé; and just now they are like, “Whoa, all of this stuff is happening.” But that's because they don't see what we see at work.

So for me, I don't completely separate the two; but I think I have gotten better at logging down.

Defender Generally, yeah. When it gets to be much, I kind of remove myself from everyone so that I don't lash out at people who don't necessarily deserve what would be coming their way….

Defender Sometimes yes, sometimes no. It really just becomes one big bubble of bullshit, because if you’re going through something in your personal life, you have figure out a way to put it to the side and not let it affect the way you're doing your work. But if it's a significant thing that's going on in your personal life, it's very hard to put it to the side and say, “Fuck it; I gotta just concentrate on work.” It's very hard….

I go to therapy. I've been in therapy for the last maybe five years, on and off. I haven't been to therapy in a while; but I'm trying to get back into therapy again. I've been into therapy to deal with my personal issues, because I think when you have somebody to talk to about your personal issues, you do not let them bleed over into your work as much. When I was at the height of therapy—meaning I was going every single week—my personal issues were never bleeding over into my work issues. I think that is the one way you really could separate the two, to get yourself a therapist. People don't understand that when you're a public defender, you have your own trauma, your client's trauma, and your client's family's trauma that you're trying to take on and decipher and sift through; so you realize, wait a minute; let me take a step back. Let me go talk to the therapist about my issues and get to the bottom of my issues. Then let me come talk about what's going on with my client.

So I've learned to separate it based on therapy. Therapy has been the godsend for me.

Did you or do you talk to a therapist? If so, how helpful did or do you find it?

Many Defenders talk to and use therapists. Amongst those that do, they generally find it to be productive and useful. One Defender states: “Oh very helpful, very helpful. I want people to speak of therapy, or feel about going to therapy, as they would about going to the dentist: it's just like a thing that you would do. Sometimes it’s not enjoyable, but there’s a marked benefit to it and I definitely feel that since I’ve been going to therapy, which has been about a year and a half now, I have definitely seen benefits. It’s not easy. It’s work, but I’ve seen benefits.” Another Defender agrees: “I did, and it was so helpful. I didn’t do it until later in my career, and I wish I had done it earlier. It was so super helpful for me to just understand that what I was going through was not unique to me, that it was in some ways a universal experience of just doing work that I care a lot about, but also that was just hard. It was good to be able to talk things through and leave them there; to then shut my brain off and move on, to not personalize everything. The process was super helpful.” Adds another Defender: “I've had a therapist since I started my job. I didn't think that I would need a therapist for my job; but it turned out to be a pretty helpful tool.”

Some Defenders note being able to overcome financial barriers to get therapy. One Defender states: “Yes, I do. She’s great. I'm very lucky because one of my friends recommended her to me. The only reason she's somewhat accessible to us is because she gives me a discount. I don't make enough money to afford her actual rate otherwise.” Adds another Defender:

I mean, I actually love therapy now. I go all the time. I plan to never stop. I think I wish I had [therapy earlier]. At the time—this was before you could get health insurance to cover your therapy—I remember saying, if I had the money, I would go to therapy in a second. Like anything that all these rich white people are doing is probably good. Also, one of my colleagues was always talking about therapy and emergency therapy—she had a lot of money—and her emergency therapy was for objectively stupid shit. And I was like, it would be so great to be able to interact with somebody whose interests are in my success and my happiness, and not necessarily my crazy friends who basically wanted to affirm their own choices and the advice they were giving us.

So I didn’t, but I think everybody should; and I would have had if I had the money. But I didn't even have the money to pay my electric bill.

Some Defenders speak of the importance of finding the right therapist. One Defender answers: “I do have a therapist now…. Oh, it's very helpful. I think it's nice to have someone to talk to who can be objective, who doesn't know you, who you don’t owe anything to, and they don't owe anything to you. You just have to find the right therapist, you know? It's like finding the right partner.” Another Defender states: “I'll say it was somewhat helpful. The search for a Black therapist was very difficult. I bounced around to a lot of different Black therapists; and it was helpful, but none of them really understood what was really happening. They understood that vicarious trauma was happening, but I think it would've been awesome to talk to a Black attorney who really got it. And I don't think any of the ones that I spoke to really got it; it just seemed like it was something that was a little removed for the therapist that I was speaking to. But it was still somewhat helpful. I would definitely recommend it.”

For Defenders that do not go to therapists, they note having other persons to talk to instead. Some, however, still entertain the idea, if only for the moment. One Defender states: “I have friends that I talk to as well as coworkers, but it’s something to think about and I probably should.” Another Defender states: “No; I talk to everyone else. My husband, he’s my therapist (laughter).” Another Defender shares: “I have been looking for a therapist; I haven’t found one yet, but I am actively looking for a therapist. Better believe that.” Another Defender remarks: “No. I should.” Says another Defender: “I don't. I guess I should. I have not, and I don't.” One Defender states:

Honestly, I have my own therapist in my house and that's my mom. My mom is a good listener. I told her she should have gone to school for this; but she's a good listener, and she also has a lot of wisdom. I wouldn't talk to her about my cases, but just about life and about work and about what I'm going through. And not only that, she's a praying mother. So when I have these problems, she's praying for me as well. It definitely makes a difference, and it helps. So I would say that my mom’s therapy has helped me way more than me going to an actual therapist; and that's not to knock other people that go through therapy, but this is what has worked for me.

Other responses:

Defender Yes. I find it helpful because sometimes you just need to get it out; and you may not know that the reason you've been in a funk the last couple of days is because of something you did at work, and you feel less-than because of that. And that's why you've been such an asshole the last couple of days. And it's good to have a therapist to walk you through where those feelings of inadequacy or imposter syndrome are coming from, so you can address them and kind of move on.

Defender I did actually. I mean, I talked to a therapist for a number of years; but the interesting thing was I didn't go to the therapist regarding work stuff. My brother died, and I went to the therapist about that. The work thing just became a part of it. My brother had died from suicide, so there were themes that were triggering in the job that I had to discuss because, obviously, the kind of work that we did involved those kinds of issues: people attempting to take their life, mental health concerns, and all of that. A lot of those things were very triggering to me in the first few years after his death.

Defender I have. I don’t now. I found it to be helpful, for sure. I didn’t stick with it, and I probably should have; but I thought it was helpful.

Defender Yeah, that's pretty common. I mean, most folks who I know either see someone or have seen someone. I will say that it's helpful to sometimes just talk to someone. They don't necessarily have to be like a mental health professional or a social worker or something like that. It could just be like having someone to talk to who—I was going to say “is normal”—who doesn't see everything in terms of the law. A lot of times you can find some therapeutic help by talking to a seasoned attorney in the office about your work-life balance, someone who's seen a lot over the years…. Being able to talk about things is definitely going to be helpful because … you tell some of these stories from the job and they're just like, “What? What are you talking about? That’s legal?!”

Defender A client of mine committed suicide; and it was probably midway through my tenure at [the public defender office where I worked]. I wasn't really equipped, I think, to handle that. So, my supervisor and I thought it would be a good idea if I talked to someone. So I talked to an older Black gentleman; but what we uncovered in therapy is that the client in that particular issue was just sort of the impetus to get me to therapy; there were other things that I needed to sort of move through and manage. On a scale of one to ten in terms of it being helpful, I would say it was about a seven.

Defender Yes. I'm on a break from my therapist; but yes, I've had therapy consistently since starting law school. That also helps, too. It’s very helpful, and I think that should be something that every public defender has, especially us Black folks.

Defender No. Right before I moved, I was looking for a therapist. I thought I found one, and then—I'm not lying to you—I read her bio and saw that she had worked at the DA's office.

I was looking very much for a Black therapist who I think would understand this very specific type of stress. I think all therapists can talk to you about stress in general, but I do think that the things that we experience are very specific. I think we as Black attorneys see and deal with a lot of traumatic things every single day….

I’m hoping with our new collective bargaining agreement that [we will have] four free therapeutic sessions a month. I am going to try to utilize that. I'm not down on therapy. It’s just that my executive functioning is not the best, so it's really difficult for me to make appointments. Like if I go to the doctor, it means I have to be dying. Making appointments is very difficult for me.

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