Topic: Vicarious Trauma, Empathy Fatigue, and Self-Care in the Legal Profession

Minnesota Lawyers for Concerned Lawyers presents Vicarious Trauma, Empathy Fatigue, and Self-Care in the Legal Profession.

Minnesota Lawyers for Concerned Lawyers (LCL) offers confidential support and professional assistance for mental health, chemical dependency, or any other condition that negatively affects the quality of one's life at work or at home.  LCL provides support for Minnesota lawyers, judges, law students, legal support staff, and their immediate family members.

This program will discuss types of trauma, the impact of others' trauma, our risks, and what to watch for.  Participants will learn self-care techniques that will lessen our exposure to trauma and help us develop resilience.

Speaker: Joan Bibelhausen, Executive Director of Minnesota Lawyers for Concerned Lawyers

Joan Bibelhausen has served as Executive Director of Lawyers Concerned for Lawyers since 2005. She is an attorney and received her JD from the University of Minnesota Law School. Joan is nationally recognized for her work in the lawyer assistance and diversity and inclusion realms and has significant additional training in counseling, mental health and addiction, diversity, employment issues, and management.

Joan has a passion for reducing the stigma about asking for and offering help to do our best work and live our best lives in the legal profession. She has spent her career working with legal professionals at a crossroads because of mental illness and addiction concerns, well-being, trauma, stress, and related issues, and has a particular interest in helping those with career challenges.

Joan has developed and presented numerous CLE and other programs throughout Minnesota and nationally and has written on mental health and addiction, implicit bias and mental health, career and life balance and satisfaction, stress, diversity and inclusion, marketing, and other issues concern to the legal profession. She is active in the MN State Bar Association, Hennepin and Ramsey County and American Bar Associations, the Federal Bar Association Minnesota Chapter, the Minnesota Disability Bar Association, and Minnesota Women Lawyers. She has served on the ABA Commission on Lawyers Assistance Programs (CoLAP) and its Advisory Commission. She has chaired CoLAP’s Education Committee and its 2016 Conference Planning Committee. She has chaired the MSBA Life and the Law Committee and the HCBA Solo and Small Firm Practice Section and has co-chaired the HCBA Diversity Committee. She represents a disability perspective on many bar-related diversity committees and initiatives, including the MSBA Diversity and Inclusion Council. Joan also served on the MSBA Board of Governors, the HCBA’s Strategic Planning and Leadership Institute task forces, and the ADA Minnesota and Minnesota Alliance on Problem Gambling boards.

Joan coauthored “Stress and Resiliency in the US Judiciary” for the ABA 2020 Journal of the Professional Lawyer, “Reducing the Stigma – William Mitchell College of Law – Spring 2015“, published in the Mitchell Hamline Law Review (Vol. 41, Issue 3), and frequently writes for Minnesota and national bar publications. Minnesota Lawyer recognized her with a 2017 Diversity and Inclusion Award for her work regarding implicit bias and mental health in the legal profession. In 2022 she received an inaugural Impact Award from Minnesota Women Lawyers and was presented with the Chief’s Award from the Minnesota Supreme Court and Federal District Court for service to the health and well-being of the lawyers and judges in Minnesota.

Remote attendance only.

• Member Cost: Free
• Non-Member Cost: $15

CLE credit has been applied for this session.

Please RSVP by October 30, 2022.

If you have any questions or concerns, please contact Amanda Bean or Jennessa Carlson at amandab@hllawfirm.com or mpa.jennessa@gmail.com.