An immigration lawyer’s work is rarely easy. The outcomes are high stakes, and the statutes are complex and harsh. The law is unstable because immigration law relies heavily on shifting agency memos. Backlogs and case completion times seem only to multiply. Clients understandably are on edge, and lawyers try to help them comprehend a maddening system. Immigration law is a challenging practice area, no matter who occupies the White House. During the Trump administration, however, the executive branch made things especially difficult as it focused its power on grinding the system to a halt.
In the midst of the Trump administration, asylum lawyers participated in a survey administered by Professors Lindsay Harris and Hillary Mellinger. Harris and Mellinger’s main finding is high levels of burnout and secondary traumatic stress among the asylum attorneys who responded to the survey. These attorneys scored higher, meaning more burnout, than social workers, hospital doctors, nurses, prison wardens, and immigration judges. In Asylum Attorney Burnout and Secondary Trauma, Harris and Mellinger report their methods and findings, and make recommendations for alleviating the status quo.
Harris and Mellinger used two established tools. They administered the Copenhagen Burnout Inventory and the Secondary Traumatic Stress Scale to survey participants. Additionally, they asked their own demographic questions and a free response question (“Is there anything else you would like to share about the challenges of your job as an immigration/asylum attorney?”). Since Harris and Mellinger’s study relied on self-selected, volunteer participants—and is not based on a random sample—it shares the same potential for selection bias as any similar survey. The authors are careful to remind us that their results reflect the responses of those who participated and cannot be generalized to all asylum attorneys. Nevertheless, over 700 respondents to the survey were included in the authors’ analysis, which signals that these asylum lawyers were struggling and is an indication that others might be struggling as well.
The mean personal burnout score for the asylum lawyers in the survey was 65.12. The closer the score is to 100, the higher the level of burnout. Personal burnout measures physical and psychological fatigue and exhaustion. For social workers, it was 38.8 and for prison wardens, it was 33 (in previous applications of the same survey not conducted by Harris and Mellinger). The mean work burnout score for the asylum attorneys was 63.6, which is higher than social workers (35.8) and prison wardens (32.6). Work burnout measures physical and psychological fatigue and exhaustion as related to work. The mean client burnout score was 44.75, which also is higher than other groups, but not as dramatically. Client burnout measures physical and psychological fatigue and exhaustion as related to work with clients.
The mean secondary traumatic stress score for the asylum attorneys was 2.95. The closer the score is to 5, the higher the level of secondary traumatic stress. The stress scale asks questions about intrusive thoughts (e.g., thinking about clients outside of work involuntarily), avoidance (i.e., procrastination), and arousal (e.g., being short-tempered).
In addition to discovering burnout and stress scores, Harris and Mellinger collected demographic data. The respondents’ self-reports indicated that they are overwhelming female and white. The authors’ regression findings show that female respondents were associated with higher levels of burnout and stress. Regarding race, the authors’ findings are uncertain, given the small number of respondents of color. However, the authors found that of the survey participants of color, there were higher levels of burnout. The authors recommend further research here. The authors also found that solo practitioners were associated with higher levels of burnout and stress, and that having support staff and lower caseloads are associated with lower levels of burnout and stress. There are also findings in the article related to age, hours worked, geographic location of practice, and timing of survey completion (pre or post-pandemic).
As Harris and Mellinger explain, asylum practice is difficult because it inherently involves trauma. Lawyers must shepherd trauma victims through a bureaucratic system that requires asylum applicants to retell their trauma multiple times. There is pressure to relate to trauma perfectly. Because asylum applications usually are not well documented, due to the nature of the claim—the applicant usually was on the run to seek safety—the law tells adjudicators to base their decision on the applicant’s credibility. Adjudicators make credibility determinations based on the consistency of the applicant’s retelling (even if research shows that this is difficult for trauma victims). Lawyers are exposed multiple times to each client’s trauma. This exposure occurs within a system that is stingy with success. Lawyers are constantly pushing the boulder up the hill, fighting to help their clients in a system poised to say no. The system is designed to make pursuit of a case difficult, seems never to work as it should, and, at times, views immigration lawyers as distasteful because they advocate for their clients.
The Trump administration introduced new elements that made representing asylum applicants even more challenging. For example, the Trump administration restricted access to asylum adjudication by forcing asylum applicants to remain in dangerous conditions in Mexico until their hearing date. Additionally, the Trump administration used its power over the immigration agencies to change agency interpretations of asylum law to narrow its availability. Due to these efforts, Harris and Mellinger explain that asylum attorneys not only represent clients but also must take “regular action to try to protect the very institution of asylum.”
The authors present suggestions for improvement. Recognizing that asylum applicants with legal representation have a higher chance for success, the authors make their case that the fairness of the system depends on keeping asylum attorneys practicing and healthy. The authors not only recommend tools to help attorneys exist within the system, but also recommend a major change to the system itself.
For attorneys, the authors argue that self-care and “responsible trauma stewardship” is ethically required. According to the authors, law schools must teach this and provide future lawyers with the tools necessary to be attuned to mental health. Employers must continue these educational efforts, as well as experiment with reducing and diversifying caseloads and providing access to mental health counseling. As far as systemic change, the authors recommend the creation of a more independent adjudication system. The authors would move immigration adjudicators out from under the political control of the Executive Branch.
The authors recognize that their work is the beginning of a conversation and that their research does not answer all questions about the mental well-being of asylum attorneys. Because this study is the first of its kind, it does not measure whether attorneys were worse off under the Trump administration. It does, however, provide us with information about how these 700 asylum attorneys fared during the Trump administration, and the attorneys are not “alright.” The responses to the survey’s free-form question included this one:
I have decided to quit law altogether. It’s impossible to deal with the financial crush of serving a low-income population AND cope with the secondary trauma. I’ve lost my appetite for the law altogether after this shit show area of law. I have no faith in justice or the law anymore.
Harris and Mellinger deserve kudos for identifying a problem and starting the conversation on how to turn things around.
This was an interesting article. These last six years have been particularly difficult for immigration lawyers. I would add to the list above two government shut downs; the pandemic and here in Pennsylvania the shut down of the York Immigration Court and detention center. This scattered our clients randomly across the country making their continued representation quite difficult. There was the pandemic which resulted in courts being shut down; prison visits impossible; and having to conduct merit hearings of detained clients by telephone. Lastly, there has been an influx of violence, war and disasters throughout the planet. It has been, on the whole, rather exhausting. However, the importance of the work has never been greater. There are few areas of practice where an attorney can feel more directly the importance of his work.