Using empathy in communication with clients

This video explains more about what empathy is and why it is important.

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Transcript: Video 3  Raj on empathy

RAJ

Empathy is about understanding another person's perspective, emotions, or experiences. It's useful in the workplace because it helps us develop relationships with people. And in the legal workplace, that will be developing client relationships and co-worker relationships. People with good emotional regulation can use empathy to strengthen bonds, and also diffuse difficult emotional situations, which will be helpful with clients, too. Research also shows that if you have an empathetic manner with clients - that they're more trusting of you and more willing to share information.

There is a difference between sympathy and empathy. Sympathy comes from a perspective of caring. And it can be defined as concern for another person's well-being or welfare in the face of a threat or an obstacle. But empathy is about understanding and recognising another person's experience or perspective. And you're not required to feel the same feelings as them.

If you experience a lot of sympathy in your role, it's important to note that that's not that productive for you or the client. And it can contribute to burnout. So it's important to note that you should be working within your professional role and thinking about how you can make a positive difference to someone using your training. And that's legal. And you're not there to be their therapist or friend. And so just focusing on your professional role -

It's also important to note that our feelings of empathy or detachment or sympathy will change over time. This is known as professional desensitisation. So materials and cases and clients and encounters that we experience - we may not have the same reactions as we get more experience in our role. And we may become desensitised to them.

So if you find something particularly difficult, the light at the end of the tunnel is it may not always be that way. However, it's also important to note that if you have a lot of experience in your role, then you may be desensitised to something that is very difficult for the client. And so you have to be aware that you have to offer that empathy because they may not know that you've experienced this many, many times and you've heard the story. So you have to take note of that.

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Video 3  Raj on empathy

Empathy has been identified as a key legal competency (LETR, 2013; BSB, 2019). There are a wide range of different definitions of what empathy actually means, but a good starting point is this description:

This definition suggests empathy combines both an emotional and a cognitive response. By understanding a client’s experience or situation ‘affectively’ you are feeling something of the emotions they have or are experiencing in relation to it. By understanding it ‘cognitively’, you are able to think through the client’s perspective, and the emotions it involves whilst also retaining a sense of detachment (sometimes referred to as ‘perspective taking’). You still realise you are viewing the situation from the outside, enabling you not to be overwhelmed by emotions in the same way as the client might be.

The elements of empathy

There is evidence that empathy is a teachable skill or competency, making it a valuable part of client care (Samra and Jones, 2019). The next activity explores its use in more detail.

Legal professionals are sometimes concerned that experiencing empathy for a client will lead to them becoming less neutral or objective in their advice and representation (Jones, 2021; Westaby and Jones, 2018). This may be because they are conflating empathy with sympathy. While sympathy can lead to a strong sense of emotion at the plight of another, the cognitive element of empathy prevents the forms of over-identification that can lead to individuals potentially acting in inappropriate or unprofessional ways.

This clip by Professor Brené Brown discusses the distinction between empathy and sympathy in more detail.