The First Thing We Do, Let’s Heal All the Law Students: Incorporating Self-Care into a Criminal Defense Clinic

Abstract

Law students in direct services clinics represent clients in crisis and therefore experience stress and vicarious trauma similar to some practicing attorneys. Yet legal education and scholarship rarely recognize those harms or offer strategies to increase student resiliency in clinics and in the practice years that follow. Seeking to fill those critical gaps, this Article describes an innovative self-care curriculum in the Stanford Criminal Defense Clinic that encourages mindful selfreflection, teaches coping skills, and increases resilience. Inspired by mindfulness-based stress reduction programs from medical education, the self-care curriculum alerts students to sources of stress in their attorney/client relationships and provides strategies to address those stressors. The curriculum is closely aligned with theories from the humanizing legal education movement. Each self-care session includes: the introduction of resiliency tools, mindful reflection on and sharing of personal successes, and the creation of supportive group norms. Qualitative student feedback demonstrates that the self-care workshops significantly enhance wellbeing. Many students value the workshops as a space to mindfully analyze both positive and troubling