Believe it or not, lawyers do have feelings!

The Balint model helps our lawyers to think in a group about the dynamics of the lawyer-client relationships. The initiative has already resulted in improved client service and the longer-term aspiration is to develop our services into a thoughtful organisation.

Jenny Beresford-Jones, a senior legal advisor, and Dr Vikram Luthra, psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, explain more.

Twenty years of catching up

All solicitors are familiar with the annual process of renewing their practicing certificate and making their yearly statement of continued competence to practice.

The competence statement includes four strands: ethics, professionalism and judgement; technical legal competence; working with other people; and managing oneself and one’s work.

Making space to reflect on and learn in the context of these four strands is one of the competence requirements set by the SRA.

It is fair to say that in comparison to the medical profession, the legal sector is 20 years behind in terms of the requirement to reflect. Doctors, for example, are required to provide substantial evidence of the extent of their reflective practice, in both their appraisals and their accreditations.

However, the direction of travel coming out of the SRA guidance is an increasing trend towards taking reflective practice much more seriously, and Balint model groups offer one approach to doing this.

Finding a different way of listening to feelings in the doctor-patient relationship

Balint groups were first set up for GPs by psychoanalysts Michael and Enid Balint in the 1950s, known at the time as research-cum-training groups. Historically, doctors were taught to diagnose, investigate, and treat, but there was little consistent training available on understanding and taking seriously the unconscious and relational aspects of the doctor-patient relationship.

Michael and Enid Balint understood that there was more to a case than diagnosis and drug treatment, and that if a doctor could gain a fuller picture of their own emotions evoked in the doctor-patient relationship, then the doctor’s capacity to help the patient may be indirectly improved along with the ongoing relationship.

Nowadays Balint groups, are used across a variety of professions wherever a professional such as a doctor, nurse, social worker, teacher, is in a therapeutic two-person relationship. Although these groups were initially set up in the UK, they have been recognised globally over several years with over 30 member countries belonging to the International Balint Federation.

The groups are not meant to be teaching, solution-finding, or for therapy. However, they often increase wellbeing and connectedness of the professional to the patient. Research studies have shown that the Balint groups conducted with doctors can help to prevent burnout and improve job-satisfaction. This has also been the experience with the Mills & Reeve pilot project.

Loss, rivalry, and being “in the wrong”

A lawyer’s job is to provide specialist advice to clients, who in return pay a fee for the benefit of the knowledge and experience. The lawyer-client relationship is front and centre of all the work lawyers do. Even though Balint groups can be applied to the legal profession, the transactional aspect may add another layer to the investment of feelings in the relationship.

In some areas of law, the emotional element of the work can be intense. Family lawyers have clients whose marriage has broken down, who are trying to create an ongoing provision for care of their children, and the painful loss of all the hopes and dreams they once had of a life together with their partner.

Private client lawyers deal with tax planning, trusts and estates, and again issues of loss, and disappointment, rivalry and competitiveness are plain to see under the legal documentation that charts a family’s ups and downs, bereavements, estrangements, loves, reconciliations, and fault lines.

Disputes lawyers deal with clients who are engaged in litigation, which comes hand in hand with judgment. There is competitive desire to out-manoeuvre the opposite party, to win the case and be “proved right” and find favour with the court. There is the parallel anxiety about losing the case, being judged “in the wrong”.

And for all litigants there is the anxiety about whether their story can be told persuasively, about being believed, about being validated, about being able to find “the truth” at long last, and underneath it all - for all concerned - the stress associated with clocking up a hefty legal bill.

But even in non-contentious practice areas such as projects or commercial, the lawyer client relationship, like any human relationship, is full of emotional content. Projects and transactions are worked on, sometimes collaboratively, but sometimes with a challenging backdrop of tight deadlines, scarce resources, or difficult people.

The client is dependent on a lawyer’s expertise, while the lawyer is dependent on the client’s satisfaction with the work they have done. And this dependence as in all relationships can trigger off a whole host of behaviours that can be tricky to manage. It can be a struggle for clients to accept needing the help of someone else, or to be able to accept advice, even at the same time as asking for it.  

Add to all this the other pressures that lawyers work under – billable hours, charging fees, the need to attract and retain clients. A young lawyer may need to spend time and obtain guidance to do a good and accurate job, but is haunted by the question: “can the file bear it”? Meaning, “will the client be prepared to pay me for taking this time?”

Time is literally money for lawyers, and it is very challenging for young lawyers to feel able to take the proper time needed to learn while at the same time being able to hit targets.

In the lawyer-client relationship, the lawyer’s job is to know about an area of expertise and to communicate this to others who do not “know”. Great anxiety and even shame can therefore attach to situations where a young lawyer feels that in fact they do not really know or are not in fact able to advise confidently.

Navigating Covid

In March 2020 Covid hit, and like almost all other organisations Mills & Reeve moved to online group meetings via Zoom and Teams. More senior colleagues tended to find they already had a rich seam of relationships within the firm that could simply be translated online, but younger ones did not have this to draw on, and many found themselves isolated. They were starting the stresses of newly qualified life without the holding function of sitting in a team. The toughest gig of all was for lateral hires who had qualified from another firm, who didn’t even have a network of fellow ex-trainees alongside them.  

In an effort to help and understand, Mills & Reeve offered two pilot Balint groups – one for newly qualified lawyers and one for young litigation lawyers. 

Key to the establishment of the pilot was the support of the learning and development team, and its ability to see a place for reflective groups as part of the general programme at the firm around the development of junior lawyers.

Also crucial was the support of senior lawyers and line managers, and the acceptance that the monthly groups offered something valuable and important to the junior lawyers taking part which it was worth investing in.

It was made explicit at the outset that joining the group was completely voluntary and was in no way linked to performance reviews or objectives. Group members were asked to keep discussions confidential. It was emphasised that the main purpose of the group was to better understand the lawyer-client relationship and it was not intended to be training, coaching, or personal therapy.

What are Balint groups?

Traditionally Balint groups consist of 8-12 members, facilitated by one or preferably two accredited UK Balint society leaders. The groups take place regularly, ranging from a weekly to monthly basis, each group lasting from 45 to 90 minutes. However once set up, the frequency and duration should not be altered to maintain consistency. The group membership is closed.

The focus is on the lawyer-client relationship, rather than a lawyer-supervisor, lawyer-team/organisation or other relationship which can be considered as a resistance to uncovering the more difficult or uncomfortable feelings in the lawyer-client relationship.

The structured and confidential nature of the group allows for a reflective space to explore the lawyer-client relationship. Within each Balint group session, the lawyer is invited to present a case from memory, in order for it to come from one’s unconscious, and importantly without bringing or taking notes.

Following the lawyer’s presentation, the facilitator invites the group to ask any brief clarification questions of fact of the case. This is followed by the presenting lawyer silently observing the group process.

The group discusses the case with a focus on the feelings within the lawyer-client relationship. The facilitator invites the presenting lawyer to return to the discussion and can further contribute if they wish to.

The work of the facilitator is to protect and to ensure the group runs smoothly. The facilitators are not there to instruct, teach, diagnose, or offer summaries of the relationship, the latter often preventing a curiosity from opening-up in the group.

It is important to note in the original doctor-patient groups and even nowadays in the health profession there is an emphasis on the personal history of the patient to understand the patient further. This history gathering process is not part of the focus or routinely expected within the legal profession, however, within the Balint group setting, members are encouraged to offer thoughts, ideas or associations about the client or their client’s past which can further develop the understanding of the lawyer-client relationship.