My journey to the practice of law began the day I was burned. I had just finished my master’s degree in rehabilitation counseling. I managed rental units and had to tear an old foam-backed carpet from a floor in a small house. I used acetone as a solvent to lift the adhesive residue. The fumes, being heavier than air, floated on air currents close to the floor and found a pilot light around the corner, down the hall, and underneath a closet door. The ensuing flash fire resulted in disfiguring scars over 63% of my body, a lawsuit, a settlement, and a label change on the product I had used. It led me from life as a counselor to law school and a litigation practice.
This article explores my experience as a client. My burn and my training as both a counselor and a lawyer give me perhaps a unique insight into the healing process of a traumatically injured individual, and how lawyers and the litigation process figure into it.

The following observations are based upon life experience:

Lawyers using basic counseling skills help a client to heal, and help a lawyer to do a better job.

The ambulance took me to the University of Iowa Hospital’s burn treatment center, where I laid on a gurney and waited for someone to tell me what to expect. The answer came from my burn surgeon. He appeared, took off his mask, informed me that I had a less than 50/50 chance of survival, and told me to relax and let him do his job. The following hours, days, and weeks offered unimaginable pain and fear. My skin sloughed, debridment began, and I descended into a nightmare. A month after my release I met with my lawyers, and they began to investigate my burn.

A lawyer‘s case investigation process may be doing more for the client’s healing process than he or she realizes. Basic counseling skills include empathy, reflection, and clarification. These are terms of art in counseling which represent specific clinical skills that lawyers often intuitively use. With minimal training, lawyers can and should achieve some proficiency in these skills. Such skills facilitate not only a more thorough information gathering process, but can help move the client toward an acceptance of the reality of the injury and its consequences. After spending extensive time in the hospital fighting for their lives, an injured client faces the tremendous task of rehabilitating the body and rebuilding a sense of self. The effort to recover damages in a lawsuit is intertwined with psycho-social recovery. A lawyer who recognizes this relationship is better prepared to attain both ends. Moreover, a lawyer who does not understand this relationship, and his or her place within it, can unknowingly cause further psychological harm. A lawyer has an ethical obligation to make sure no further harm is done to their client.
Shortly after a traumatic injury, the injured client faces a plethora of new feelings regarding their lives. A dispassionate professional believing a case worthwhile therapeutically benefits the client. A lawyer to saying that the injury should not have happened, that someone else may share in the fault, and that maybe things could be changed to prevent this from happening again, can create a remarkably powerful force in the client’s healing process.

In my case, I felt empowered knowing my lawyers, who placed fault on the acetone company, thought my case was worth pursuing. After months of severe pain and isolation in the burn unit, somebody was advocating for me. It began a process of re-building both my body and my mind. The attorney-client relationship did as much as anything else to give me the perspective necessary to successfully rehabilitate after my burn. My lawyers went beyond their role as legal advocates. They advocated for me as a whole person, keeping an awareness of my psychological state in mind and helping me to pursue both legal and health goals.

Assessment of fault: why did this happen to me?

As the flames burst through the doorway , I remember thinking: “This cannot be happening.” That thought replayed in the months and years after the burn. I cannot believe I did this. If only I could go back to that day and change it all. Why did I buy the acetone? Why did I not understand that it could explode long after it had evaporated?
An examination of the fault question poses an emotion-laden process for the injured client. A client must deal not only with doubts and fears regarding memories of the incident, but with the current anti-litigation climate of our culture. Psychological attributions, in part based on cultural and societal beliefs, affect almost every injured person. Many people hold the belief that suing anyone constitutes an immoral act. Beliefs that the victim deserved the injury, or that “bad things happen to bad people,” can bolster irrational thinking and create stumbling blocks on the path toward healing.

A client may blame him or herself in some way, even if sharing little if any fault legally. While jurisprudence measures an individual’s part in the injury by comparative fault, the general public does not share that analysis when discussing an incident with the injured. During my suit I encountered beliefs running the gamut from “you should sue the @#$%,” to the belief that it is morally reprehensible to sue anyone for anything. Many people, including some close friends and family, opined that sometimes bad things just happen, and that everyone is looking for someone to blame rather than taking responsibility for their own actions. In conversations they implied that when things like this happen, it is fate, or God’s will, or something the injured person deserved. People who expressed these views, perhaps unwittingly, undermined my much needed sense of support and validation. At times I felt put-down and harshly judged for bringing suit against the corporation which made the acetone.

A lawyer must display an air of encouragement and empowerment when addressing the issue of fault with a client. Using basic counseling techniques a lawyer can provide a safe environment in which to delve into this issue of fault. Paying attention to emotions while clarifying details of the incident, will convince the client that you have become truly engaged in the process of discovering the truth about what happened. A lawyer who communicates to a client that the lawyer will accept whatever comes of the analysis without judgment of the client will facilitate a safe and effective exploration of the fault issue.

My lawyers helped me examine the issue of fault in an analytical context and an environment of safety and support. By focusing on the facts within the objective framework of the law, they helped me understand what really happened. I needed to know why this happened to me. I wanted to know whether I had a chance of winning my case. The truth of what happened provided both the basis for my psychological recovery, and my legal claim.
Through multiple interviews and questioning by my lawyers, the details of the event became clear. Hazy moments were scrutinized and details I had forgotten surfaced. My lawyers helped me to come to an understanding of what elements of fault I may have contributed to my injury. This clarified my awareness and understanding regarding the accident. Through the course of this process I had to deal with my overwhelming fears and severe post-traumatic stress. In the time period directly following my injury, the whole world became surreal and frightening. My reality would never be quite the same. My face did not look like me, my relationship with my wife changed forever, and my feeling that the world was a safe and predictable place had disappeared. I would wake in the night dreaming of fire chasing me into the shower, still burning me while the water ran. I felt nervous sitting by a lit candle. I foresaw whatever bad that could happen, happening to me and my family. I lived in a constant state of stress. However, the preparation by my attorneys empowered me. It provided a means by which I could carefully and thoughtfully talk about my injury in a realistic and healthy manner. I learned to articulate what had happened. It prepared me for what my attorneys deemed a great deposition. But for me it instilled a renewed confidence that carried me through law school and into a new life.

Referrals to counselors and psychologists must be considered.

My psychologist listened to me describe lighting the barbeque grill for the first time, the lack of a marital relationship with my wife, and the descriptions of the people who stopped and stared at me when I encountered them. She heard about everything about my life, all my secret thoughts and fears. She showed me support and insight as only a professional counselor can. How could I ever achieve normalcy? Could I ever accept this new face, this new skin, this new me?

The journey toward acceptance and transcendence of a disability is a non-linear process. During the prosecution of a personal injury case a lawyer will interact with a client at many different stages. At some point most clients will have emotional difficulties adjusting to injury. These difficulties can result in full-blown psychological diagnoses that need to be dealt with as soon as possible. Lawyers are not therapists. They should keep a list of psychologists and counselors to whom a client can be referred when they sense the need has arisen. Understanding the dynamics of psychological healing and having proficiency in the basic counseling skills, besides helping in the litigation process, will help enable a lawyer to recognize when that need has arisen.
A lawyer can encourage and support the participation of a counselor or psychologist in the client’s healing process. Do not ever refer someone to a psychologist or counselor simply to enhance a damage claim. They can become labeled by the experience and experience further trauma to their psychological health. A client coping well with their injury does not need a psychological referral. Recognizing the need to refer your client requires a basic understanding of the process of adjustment to a tragic injury.
A lawyer should work with the counselor or psychologist early in the case to educate that professional of their role as an expert witness. Many such professionals, for instance, do not realize the fact that patient notes and records are not be strictly privileged and may be produced to the defense during litigation. My lawyers conferred with my psychologist regarding her diagnosis of my post-traumatic stress disorder, and her role in my rehabilitation. I felt good knowing my lawyers made up part of the team of people taking care of me.

Litigation puts stress on your client.

I sat across from the lawyer taking my deposition: my heart was racing, convinced that he would try and manipulate anything I said to make it seem that I caused the accident to happen, that I brought this fate upon myself. For that moment, I really hated him. He represented the product that had burned me
Litigation increases the stress level of the client. This stress stems from the necessary assessment of fault, the questioning and examination of the details surrounding the event, depositions and discovery issues, and the stigma attached to litigation by our society. The process of litigation can trigger intense emotions in a client. Lawyers need to address this stress and help funnel this energy into positive outcomes for the client. I felt stressed when I realized that the defendant would have access to my past medical records, even those not germane to my case. This felt like a personal violation. But my lawyers forewarned me and helped me understand the basis for it, and reassured me that the records would remain confidential to anyone outside the defense’s law firm. Often my lawyers served me best by simply taking the time to actively listen to me and patiently answer my questions until I understood the process. When I understood the process, I could then re-channel my energies to become a better participant in it.

Adjustment to disability takes time and understanding.

Ten years have passed since my burn. My first marriage was a victim of the fire. I’m married again, have a wonderful wife, and have two beautiful children and practice law with one of my burn lawyers. I feel good about my life in a way I never believed possible after the burn. In some ways I would not change anything that happened to me. The journey to feeling this way took a long time, hard work, and help.
People adjust to the changes brought on by a traumatic injury in different ways. This non-linear process involves stages of shock, denial, anger, depression, pain, and acceptance. Ideally a client will evolve emotionally and psychologically to incorporate the injury into a new positive identity. Feelings about disfiguring scars and functional limitations change over time. A client’s new identity will evolve. A lawyer’s role in that identity can become very important during the course of litigation.

I had huge hypertrophic scars covering a large portion of my face. These scars did not show up until six months after I left the hospital. The involvement of my face held an entirely new facet of grief for me. Up until then, I thought my scars would mainly be limited to my arms and legs. A few months before the case settled, I had plastic surgeries which led to a series of complications. The day they implanted tissue expanders into my neck to expand the skin and excise the scars, I bled profusely all day. Fears of death came immediately when the nurses put me back into the same room I had occupied at the burn unit two years earlier as a burn patient. While I was enduring this experience, my attorneys kept a vigilant watch over my interests. Knowing their involvment in my life and my care gave me a certain peace of mind. I knew if something went wrong they would fight for me.

Throughout the litigation, my lawyers always found the positives in my recovery. Even though I had substantial damages, they quickly pointed out that my attitude and personality would get me through this ordeal. They had worked with other burned survivors and had a frame of reference that proved valuable. I had often thought of becoming a lawyer prior to my burn. After the suit, my lawyers encouraged me to follow this aspiration and go to law school. They praised and steeled my determination in the face of personal adversity.

Litigation can mean more than economic recovery.

A monetary award is usually the measure of legal success in a personal injury case. But even more than the material aspects of the lawsuit, my lawyers gave me something important. They helped me reclaim my personal power over my body and over my life. Yes, they made the acetone company change its label. And by doing so, we have hopefully prevented someone else from being burned. They never wavered in their commitment to me or my case. My lawyers became friends and mentors in my life and in my profession.

Further Suggested Reading:
The Helping Interview – Benjamin
On Becoming A Person – Carl Rogers
The Psychology of Disability – Carolyn Vash