(engaging music)
- [Louise Voiceover] Hello Gatehouse insiders,
me again Louise Hvala, detective for the legal profession,
showing you the truth about it
and the amazing people that work in it.
In this episode I'm finding out about health and well-being
in the law and what it takes to become a barrister.
Who else to better shed a light on these areas other
than Dr. Michelle Sharpe, barrister
and advocate for mental health within the law.
Also don't forget to subscribe to the Gatehouse Legal
Recruitment YouTube channel, or you might miss out.
(engaging music)
- I wanted to frame our discussion around two areas:
which is mental health and well-being within the law
'cause that's something you're quite
passionate about, and becoming a barrister.
But I wanted to first begin with what got you so immersed
and so passionate about health and well-being within law?
- Well it was a collision of a few events, at that time
while practising as young barrister, a very newish barrister
I was also lecturing part-time
at Melbourne University and one of the subjects
I was lecturing in was Legal Ethics.
And so I became very interested in the intersection between
wellness and legal ethics, and that was back in 2007;
so that was before Beyondblue Survey had been published.
So I was reading a lot about a lot of the U.S. studies
and finding that it really reflected a lot
of my experiences in practise at the time, and also about
that time it coincided with a suicide at the Victorian Bar.
So through those and some other events it really sort of
galvanised my interest and from that I went
to the Victorian Bar Chairman at the time
and pointed out this research, and he was fantastic,
and also given recent events at the Bar, assisted me
in setting up the Bar's Health and Well-Being Committee
as it's now become known; back then it was called
Bar Care Committee, and from there really the work
that I did at the Victorian Bar and also
my own research and writing really grew.
- Have you found with the research you've done,
is there much difference between say the legal profession
and the accounting profession, or other professions?
- I think lawyers don't fare terrible well in terms
of their mental health and I think there are,
I mean there are a lot reasons offered for that.
Personally, I think it's a combination of legal training
and legal practise, so I think also the legal profession
probably attracts people who have a certain bent;
who have certain interests and in the process
of legal training really encourages or rewards
the development of certain kinds of characteristics.
Really legal training doesn't so much teach you the law
but teaches you a way to think about the law,
how to think like a lawyer and that really involves
a certain set of characteristics which are purposely useful
for legal practise but conversely tend
to undermine resiliency in lawyers.
I think they tend to undermine mental health.
And those traits or those characteristics in the way of
looking at the world tend to be reinforced in legal practise
and then added to that you have this stress
of legal practise; so I think it can create
a perfect storm of factors that make poor
mental health a real professional hazard.
- Now in the legal profession there's quite
a negative stigma around mental health.
What's your thoughts on this and how can we change
our viewpoint of mental health so it allows people
to open up and actually speak about it more openly?
- Well as you know mental health
is stigmatised right across the community.
But I do think it's particularly bad in the legal profession
and I think that that's so for a couple of reasons.
I think culturally we have this idea of a lawyer
as being as being fearless, and bullet-proof,
and invincible, and so poor mental health
doesn't really fit well with that.
And then I think combined with that, I think perhaps a lot
of lawyers may have been attracted to the law based on
that sort of cultural idea or any of them that may
have invested it, that certainly takes a lot of hard work
to be a lawyer, and so really think not just committed
to the profession, but committed to the idea
of the profession, of what it is to be a lawyer.
So I think a lot of people really, the idea of mental health
either when they become sick or in terms of dealing
with the issue in the profession; there's an awful lot
of resistance to admit that there's an issue
of mental ill health in the profession.
In fact, there's problem with mental
ill health within the profession.
I think that's slowly starting to change,
but I think it needs to change a whole lot more
and so the change really is at school, also really comes
down to a cultural change within the legal profession.
- What should the profession be doing as whole,
whether that be firms, in-house companies, service
providers, bodies, what should we doing as a whole
to change that view of the issue?
- Well I think we need to change our mindset first
and foremost; I think we've got to stop seeing
poor mental health as some kind of personal failing
or an indication that that particular person
is not just cut out for legal practise.
You know I think we should stop subscribing to
this Darwinian theory of legal practise
and really see it for what it is; it's a health issue
and more than that it is a professional hazard
for the local profession, so for example, if you to work
in the building industry you would encourage employees
to wear hard hats and make them available because there's
a pre-obvious recognition that the chances of getting hit
by falling masonry are pretty high
within a building site.
Similarly I there's gotta be some kind of recognition
that if you're working in the legal profession
because of the nature of what we do and also the nature
of our training, which I think is now starting to change,
makes us uniquely vulnerable to poor mental health.
So I think we've gotta change our mindset and we need to
not only encourage people to take of their health,
it's much more than just an individual responsibility.
There should be an institutional response and I think
that can involve a a number off factors.
I think speaking out about and creating awareness
should help with the stigma, but also I think making
available counselling services, having seminars,
educating people about these issues, and about proactive
steps that they can take, and I think there is theories,
a link between poor mental health
and poor ethical decision making.
And so I think there's also a role for insurers
and regulators to play in this area as well.
Because of the stigma and the resistance to dealing
with issues of poor mental health and also because
of challenges with funding, I think there's probably
some scope to doing something that sits up above
the professional, or the various associations, or law firms,
much as they do have in for example, Victorian doctors.
There's a Victorian doctor's health programme.
It's an independent organisation that provides support
and services to doctors, you know I think
something similar ought to occur in the legal profession
and you know if we all paid a small surcharge
on our practising certificate then you could have
an independent organisation with the resources
to provide assistance to lawyers; that's truly separate
from and confidential to their employer
or to a professional association.
- Did you see any other profession doing it really well?
Any other country handling these sorts of issues,
really well, is America doing anything?
- Well America, I hate to admit light-years ahead
of Australia; I think what helps them is that they have
decades of research on this issue.
For whatever reason in America they have been studying
lawyers and law students since the 1950s
and so there's such a great depth of research from that,
they have independent organisations in each American state
that provides counselling services and education services
around poor mental health in the local profession.
And all those state bodies get together at the end
of every yearand they compare notes
and work out how to it better.
I've spoken to some of them and they complain that they need
to do so much more and I always softly chuckle because if we
were doing what you're doing, things would much better here,
but--
- That's interesting.
How long do you think before Australia takes to catch up?
- I'm not sure, I think probably sadly a while.
I think at the moment on what is being said about
poor mental health in the profession, which is a huge leap
from where it was as 2006 and 2007 when I started looking
at this issue, well this is an individual thing.
That person just needs a consultant at all over
the profession, and a real reluctance both at university,
and even within the profession to even talk about this issue
that's now changing, but there doesn't seem at this stage
quite or what actually being done in a very practical way
to deal with the issue; it's still very much an issue
of yes we recognise it's a problem, this is what I reckon,
so there's a lot of people who when asked to talk about
the issue will talk from personal experience, and what's
great that there's now really starting to be a conversation.
I think we need to look more and talk more beyond just
what our personal experience is and start tapping into
a lot of the research, and look what's happening
in places like America, or even here in Victoria,
with the Victorian Doctor's Health Programme, and start
learning from what other people are doing.
- I suppose the legal profession requires high standards
of accuracy and technical excellence which makes them
wanna be perfect in everything they do.
First of all what does perfectionism have to do
with mental health and what strategies can lawyers implement
so they overcome their perfectionism through their practise?
- Well yes perfectionism, along with hedonism,
and a combative to dealing with legal issues
are all things we've learned in law school.
And they help create sort of perfect storm when it comes
to undermining mental health in lawyers.
Whilst striving to get things perfect, absolutely accurate
is a very useful attribute and perfectly functional
in legal practise, but unfortunately what they don't teach
you in law school is perfection in a imperfect world
is simply impossible, and also, at least when I was studying
law and teaching law, there wasn't then a real discussion,
or transparency around the process of teaching law
and that we were really teaching to think like a lawyer.
And so because there was no transparency around that;
so pushing you through holes instead of squares, not really
telling you why, there's no real discussion about
the pitfalls in thinking that way
and particularly if you, and when it
becomes such a part of the way you look at something at work
you take it to your personal life and how destructive
that connection can be; you know how destructive it can be
to take the qualities of perfectionism and pessimism
into our own personal relationship, or when you're dealing
with something that's personally challenging, taking
that particular mindset, to those particular challenges
just how unhelpful that can be in terms of your resilience
and your mental health; so now I think it's changing,
certainly in places like Law Council, and the universities,
now there's an awareness that we have be a bit
more transparent about training and we ought to be having
discussions about mental health and coping strategies.
And I think what's also really inadvertently helping
that along is actually the growth
of alternative dispute resolution.
Because that requires a completely different toolkit.
I mean it requires things like self-awareness and empathy
in order to be a truly effective communicator.
So inadvertently also alongside this discussion
of mental health teaching people about alternative dispute
resolution strategies is actually a great help in having
that conversation and changing those traditional orthodox
attitudes towards the legal practise
which can be destructive; so I think the opportunity
to work together more and I think that ought to be happening
more as well, I don't think it is.
I think there is a great movement within universities
and amongst local educators to deal with mental ill health
but there's not a lot of dialogue, a little bit
but not an awful lot of dialogue going on between university
teachers and the legal profession.
And equally the legal profession I think really need
to be looking at some of the work that's been done
by universities,and some of the things that's being said
by researchers in that area to get a bit of a better idea,
or handle on what are the issues,
and what are they ways of dealing with them, as well
as helping with the transition
of law students to local practitioners.
- Now moving on to, 'cause you're a barrister
what motivated you to go to the Bar?
- Well at the age of 11 I was called as a witness
in a criminal trial and I was cross-examined
and was thoroughly smitten with court process
and court procedure, I don't think I made a terribly,
good witness, I was very nervous as I was walking
into the courtroom and I asked the tea staff what I should
call the judge, and he said: your Honour or Sir.
And in my state of nervousness and excitement I misheard it
as your honourable sir, and so when the judge paused
to ask me a question, I looked up at him and said:
I am telling the truth your honourable Sir.
The whole courtroom just dissolved into laughter, so you
might think it's surprising given that experience
that I would go into the legal profession but I did
and I knew from the moment, that you know,
as I was studying law as a law student
that I certainly wanted to become a barrister.
- And so I suppose barrister wanting to transition
to the Bar, say from practise, would you say to them,
or how longb before should they transition?
Should they practise as a lawyer first and then move
to the Bar, if so how many years as a lawyer should they
be practising for, what's your
opinion or advise on what's worthwhile.
- Well I think that's always a difficult question to answer
because I think it's different from person to person.
For me I spent I think I spent three or four years
as a solicitor and I found that very helpful
in getting a feel for the legal profession
and sort of the expectations within law firms
before making a move to the Bar, and also making some
contacts as well with people who ultimately might brief me.
So I thought was really quite important, but I've known
people who've gone almost directly to the Bar, or who'd done
something else before coming to the Bar, haven't necessarily
been a a solicitor and they've done very well.
So I suppose it's very much an individual thing.
- What's I suppose, one bit of advice
that you would give another lawyer or barrister
transitioning to the Bar, what's your advice
to help them with a successful career at the Bar?
- Don't take anything personally, develop a thick skin,
but importantly I think and this tied back issues
about mental health; I think it's really important
to develop a strong support network of people at the Bar
that you can talk to, and not just one person,
but a variety of people 'cause there are some people
you would spec to that one issue but not another.
But also having a support network of people who are not
lawyers I think is equally and as important because
it really does give you perspective, and I think this
is this idea about thinking like a lawyer and sort of buying
into the idea of being a lawyer that sometimes as lawyers
we all look at the world a certain way and forget,
not everybody sees the world as we do.
Not everybody thinks what we think is important,
you know is important; my husband hates being dragged
to legal events, he thinks lawyers are the most boring
people in the world, who only talk about themselves,
or the law, and I find him to find him to be very grounding
to remind what's important and not important,
and particularly my early years at the Bar,
where I had a tendency to really strive
for perfction and take things personally.
I mean I'll never forget one of my first trials on my own,
I think even the first year at the Bar, ad it was
a Magistrate Court trial, and I lost and I was so upset.
I was speaking to my husband, didn't feel right saying like,
talking about the evidence, and couldn't understand how
I lost, and said to me: hang on a minute it's just you
and the other party, he's a stockbroker by trade
so he's very mathematical, and he said:
well you had a 50-50 chance at losing.
I don't know if that was strictly correct
but it really did help learn a bit of perspective.
- Yeah, we see more and more women in the legal profession.
Can you share your experience as a female barrister
and how it's changed from when
you started the Bar to how it is now?
- Well I think it's still challenging to be a female
barrister and I think it's now getting a little bit better.
I think we've now seen more promoted to the the bench.
Seen more women taking the silk.
But I still think we've got a way to go.
I still think there are certain stereotypes that are alive
and well that can undermine women's progress at the Bar.
So I do think unfortunately we've still got some way to go,
but there's progress, so there's hope.
- Preferably soon; sooner or later like that.
- Yeah certainly, I've got two daughters and as much
as I try to despite them from becoming a lawyer,
I've got one in particular who's quite keen,
so you know I've got an investment
that I really wanna see changed just for me
but you know for my daughter who may unfortunately join me.
- Michelle, it's been wonderful so thank you.
- Thank you very much.
(engaging music)
- [Louise Voiceover] And that's it.
Another episode of Gatehouse Insights draws to an end.
Thank you for watching.
Thank you sharing this video with your friends.
And always make sure you subscribe to the Gatehoue
Legal Recruitment channel, so you can see more.
For more infomation >> Ateşli Sevişme Sahneleriyle Kendinden Geçen Güzel Porno Yıldızları - Duration: 2:51. 
For more infomation >> GTA V: VIDA DE JOVEM - ELE ACABOU COM A LORITTA #51 🚘🚓 - Duration: 14:50. 
For more infomation >> $100 MasterCard Giveaway - 100 Subscribers! - Duration: 4:05. 
Không có nhận xét nào:
Đăng nhận xét