Vicarious trauma project

Vicarious Trauma (VT) is the experience that some legal practitioners may suffer when exposed to the traumatic experiences of other people, through client interactions or reading case materials. Legal professionals are at the highest risk of vicarious trauma as they are exposed to the experiences of clients, such as cases involving serious violence or domestic trauma. This can lead to poor mental health and wellbeing. While the impact in legal professionals is starting to be recognised, it is not usual for law students to be taught about vicarious trauma in a legal educational setting.

Gillian Mawdsley and Emma Curryer had been training students in the Criminal Justice Clinic to identify and consider the signs of vicarious trauma in themselves and others.

A project, led by Emma Curryer, assisted by Amna Sawar, was established to consider whether vicarious trauma training should be provided to students within clinical legal education and the law curriculum’. This was funded by SCiLAB in 2022. The project aimed to investigate the impact of providing vicarious trauma training to law students working in the criminal justice appeal clinic, where students are exposed to case materials involving serious offences of murder and rape.

This study used a mixed-method approach with questionnaires and interviews with students to understand their experiences of VT training. The scholarship found most participants had a lack of awareness of vicarious trauma before attending the training, and that their knowledge had significantly increased afterwards. An overwhelming number of students supported the provision of vicarious trauma training within the Law undergraduate programme as it helped them deal with exposure to difficult and traumatic materials.

Following this research, vicarious trauma training is now provided in the OU Law School to all students working on projects involving traumatic cases including the family law clinic and the international project, all of which are part of the Open Justice Centre.

The study has since received funding from the Clark Foundation for Legal Education to run a round table conference promoting the awareness of vicarious trauma, encouraging debate and discussion on Vicarious Trauma Education affecting the legal profession and assess how current practices should evolve to develop and share best practices. Those attending being representatives from all branches of the legal profession, the regulators, academics, tutors, policy makers, and the Scottish justice and associated professions.

The authors are also working with external legal networks to disseminate their findings and train others to provide vicarious trauma training to their students. 

Outputs

Journal articles

Curryer E and Mawdsley, G (2024) Navigating Vicarious Trauma: The Importance of Planning, Teaching, and Delivering Vicarious Trauma Training to Support Law Students and the Legal Profession | International Journal of Clinical Legal Education (northumbriajournals.co.uk) , International Journal of Clinical Legal Education

Conferences

Curryer, E (2023) ‘Designing and delivering Vicarious Trauma training to students in the law curriculum. Where are we now?’, Association of Law Teachers’ Annual Conference, London

Curryer, E and Mawdsley, G (2022) ‘Building Resilience for our students: The importance of Acknowledging, Teaching and Delivering Vicarious Trauma Training in Clinical Legal Education’, Global Alliance for Justice Education worldwide conference, South Africa, online workshop

Curryer, E and Mawdsley G (2022) ‘Navigating Vicarious Trauma: The importance of planning, teaching, and delivering Vicarious Trauma training to law students', European Network of Clinical Legal Education European conference workshop, online

Curryer, E and Mawdsley, G (2022) ‘Our experience of the inclusion of online VT training within the delivery of Clinical Legal Education’, Societal Sustainability, The Open University

Curryer, E (2022) ‘What about our students? A case study of the development of online Vicarious Trauma training in a Criminal Justice Clinic’, Association of Law Teachers’ Annual Conference, Manchester

Other

Curryer, E and Mawdsley, G (2024) ‘Let’s debate: The need for vicarious trauma training to support the legal profession’, LawCare website

Curryer, E and Mawdsley, G (2024) Opinion: The need for vicarious trauma training to support the legal profession | Scottish Legal News, Scottish Legal News

Meet the team

Emma Curryer

Emma Curryer joined The Open University in February 2016, first as an Associate Lecturer before being a Student Experience Manager and is now a Lecturer and Head of Department with the law school.  She teaches subjects including Criminal Law, Evidence and the SQE. Emma also leads the Criminal Justice Clinic that is part of the award winning, Open Justice Centre. The CJC was shortlisted for a LawWorks and Attorney General Student Pro Bono award in 2023.

Emma is a specialised criminal law solicitor who has worked in prosecution and defence for over 20 years. She was a Senior Crown Prosecutor with the Crown Prosecution Service for 16 years where she dealt with serious crime.  She has also been a defence lawyer, with a defence practice in Buckinghamshire and is a member of the criminal litigation accreditation scheme. She has also taught Egyptology and legal history courses.