Beyond Client-Centered Interviewing: Improving Attorney-Client Interactions through Therapeutic Jurisprudence and Multi-Cultural Training

Posted: 18 Sep 2009

See all articles by Evelyn Haydee Cruz

Evelyn Haydee Cruz

Arizona State University (ASU) - Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law

Date Written: September 16, 2009

Abstract

Therapeutic Jurisprudence courses are offered in a multitude of shapes and forms around the globe, each course as unique as the individual that teaches it. This paper describes the author’s creation of a therapeutic jurisprudence course designed around the impact of externalities on attorney-client communication and professional satisfaction. In the paper she explains how she teaches students to better communicate with clients by bringing awareness to how linguistic, cultural and social reasons affect what we say and how we say it. The ultimate goal of the course is to teach students to identify communication roadblocks as they occur, and then apply therapeutic techniques to dissolve them. Issues of control, ethics, and other difficult topics are present and discussed, but they are the subtext of the course. In turn, the course encourages students to reconsider traditional notions of the legal profession, by exposing them to alternative roles and modes of legal representation that promote a professional refocus from a legal culture obsessed with conflict, into a culture concerned with the wellbeing of the client and of the attorney.

Keywords: attorney-client, therapeutic jurisprudence, legal education

Suggested Citation

Cruz, Evelyn Haydee, Beyond Client-Centered Interviewing: Improving Attorney-Client Interactions through Therapeutic Jurisprudence and Multi-Cultural Training (September 16, 2009). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1474466

Evelyn Haydee Cruz (Contact Author)

Arizona State University (ASU) - Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law ( email )

Box 877906
Tempe, AZ 85287-7906
United States

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