Date of Award

Spring 5-26-2026

Document Type

Honors Project

University Scholars Director

Dr. Joshua Tom

First Advisor/Committee Member

Dr. Nicole Zion

Keywords

Empathy, Burnout, Vicarious Trauma, Employee Engagement, Emotion, Law

Abstract

It is well established within psychological literature how burnout develops among human service professionals including nurses, therapists, police officers, and first responders. Despite facing the same kinds of risks for burnout development by helping professions, especially trauma and stressful client relationships, the development and consequences empathy burnout have been under-researched in lawyers. This project aims to explore existing literature around burnout and empathy as related to job competency in legal professionals and develop a survey that explores empathy as a potential indirect mediating variable from burnout to employee engagement. The article additionally discusses the pathway from second-hand trauma to empathy burnout and its negative implications for lawyers and their clients, as well as demonstrate the relevance of integrating emotions into the practice of law. The survey created is comprised of validated scales measuring the variables and sub-dimensions of burnout, empathy, and employee engagement. Being a proposed study, the intended participant characteristics are criminal and civil lawyers who work with clients. Furthermore, this article examines the question of what it means to be human through an analysis of how lawyer-client relationships are mediated through legal processes and institutions, as well as how empathy becomes an essential skill and practice to respect others’ humanity. By including legal professionals in the literature of burnout and empathy, it improves health outcomes for lawyers, professional outcomes for clients, as well as reworking the narrative and better integrating emotion into the law, thus showing that empathy depletion has implications for mental health as well as job competency.

Comments

A project submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the University Scholars Honors Program 

Please also note that this is a proposed study with a completed survey

Copyright Status

http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

Additional Rights Information

Copyright held by author.

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