Professional responsibility, therapeutic jurisprudence, and preventive law.

In this essay, the author considers how therapeutic jurisprudence and preventive law might inform the field of professional responsibility. He suggests that many principles underlying professional responsibility standards are rooted in hidden psychological assumptions about the interaction between clients and lawyers. These principles often are ignored. Scientific research into the psychological assumptions underlying professional responsibility norms could have numerous beneficial effects, including clarifying professional responsibility norms and teaching lawyers to deal with clients in a way that will help clients cope with the legal system and avoid tensions with their lawyers. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Making law therapeutic for lawyers: Therapeutic jurisprudence, preventive law, and the psychology of lawyers.

The integration of therapeutic jurisprudence (TJ) with preventive law (PL) offers a uniquely satisfying and humanistic way of practicing law. The author uses the psychological data on the personality characteristics of lawyers to argue that TJ/PL is particularly well suited for lawyers with certain personality traits atypical of lawyers generally. These traits reflect altruistic, humanistic, or interpersonally oriented values; 2 of these atypical traits have been empirically linked to career dissatisfaction among lawyers. Because of the pervasiveness of the problem of lawyer job dissatisfaction, solutions are needed. TJ/PL is more than simply an alternative way of practicing law; it may actually hold the key to solving some of the problems currently besieging the legal profession. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Beyond core skills and values: Integrating therapeutic jurisprudence and preventive law into the law school curriculum.

Within the last decade, many law schools have broadened their educational missions to include lawyering skills programs that bridge the gap between practice and theory. At the same time, legal scholars have advocated training attorneys to integrate their planning and counseling roles to become "therapeutically oriented preventive lawyers." Skills and clinical programs in law schools are well suited for such training. The authors discuss the lawyering skills program they developed and direct. Using examples from classroom simulations, they illustrate how the integration of therapeutic jurisprudence and preventive law into the skills curriculum can sensitize students to the psychological aspects of the attorney–client relationship and prepare them to practice law as a humane profession. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

The intersection of therapeutic jurisprudence, preventive law, and alternative dispute resolution.

The author examines the intersection of alternative dispute resolution (ADR) with the theory of therapeutic jurisprudence (TJ) and the practical advice suggested by preventive law (PL). The 1st part of this article has a brief review of each of these approaches and notes similarities in their underlying concepts. In the 2nd part of the article, the use of TJ and PL in the practice and pedagogy of ADR is examined. A framework provided by the integration of TJ and PL can help lawyers counsel their clients in choosing between ADR methods and in designing dispute resolution systems. Finally, lessons and ideas that both TJ and PL could draw from ADR are examined. Empirical ADR research can support the premise of TJ. The implementation of ADR programs can also demonstrate the importance of balancing therapeutic factors with legal and financial factors while providing lessons for other areas of the law seeking to implement TJ and PL ideas. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Therapeutic jurisprudence and preventive law in child welfare proceedings: A family systems approach.

The field of child welfare law exemplifies opportunities and challenges facing the proponents of therapeutic jurisprudence (TJ) and preventive law (PL). The field has held itself out as promoting a therapeutic standard and goal for children, and it explicitly embraces a psychological PL theory. Nevertheless, it has failed to embrace contemporary mental health thinking about children and families (family systems theory) and reflects an outmoded, psychoanalytic, medical model that has contributed to an antitherapeutic child welfare system inconsistent with PL principles. Adopting a family systems approach requires a paradigm shift toward respecting and empowering the family as a unit. This approach is consistent with TJ/PL principles and provides a better fit between the legal system and social reality. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Preventive law before and after therapeutic jurisprudence: A foreword to the special theme issue.

Therapeutic jurisprudence (TJ) and preventive law (PL) are at once bodies of legal scholarship and professional movements that ask lawyers to reshape if not to redirect their practices. The articles that comprise this special theme issue illustrate not only how valuable or even necessary that reshaping can be; they also show how challenging it may be for lawyers to become familiar with the new terrain. Before the fields of PL and TJ became familiar, the heralds of the former called freely and widely. Practicing preventively was for Everylawyer, for the benefit of Everyclient. The teachings of TJ, evidenced by the articles in this issue, call for a more rigorous and perhaps a more careful approach. This is the tale of PL before and after it met TJ. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

And tell Tchaikovsky the news: The wedding of therapeutic jurisprudence and preventive lawyering.

Advocates for therapeutic jurisprudence (TJ) and preventive law (PL) presume that legal practice is normally unemotional and that expressing concern for the client is normally therapeutic. This response challenges both presumptions. The author argues that, as part of the service economy, legal practice involves a great deal of emotional labor. He emphasizes how psychological difficulties in being a lawyer may spring from the dilemmas of being a salesperson. He further questions linking certain emotional orientations to moral judgment by privileging compromising, expressing caring, or not being aggressive. He suggests that sometimes being affectively neutral toward clients is therapeutically indicated, and he considers how techniques and values are mixed in merging TJ and PL. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Mediational lawyering in the civil commitment context: A therapeutic jurisprudence solution to the counsel role dilemma.

A mediational lawyering role is proposed as a therapeutic jurisprudence alternative to the two traditional lawyering roles in civil commitments: client-centered-expressed interests (adversary/advocacy) model (lawyers advocate positions that clients favor and allow clients to make ultimate decisions in litigation) and best interests (nonadversarial) model (lawyers join in seeing that clients obtain the help that clients would want if only they knew what is in their own best interests). With a client who has mental disabilities, the adversarial lawyer operates under a presumption that client wishes release from mental health facility or not to be committed; the presumption of the best interests lawyer is that client needs protection, habilitation, and/or treatment. The mediational model is more therapeutic for clients with mental disabilities because it combines the therapeutic aspects and avoids the antitherapeutic aspects of the traditional roles. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Plea bargaining by prosecutors and defense attorneys: A decision theory approach.

Tested the impact of severity of sentence and probability of conviction on plea bargaining decisions made by 32 prosecutors and 39 defense attorneys. Hypothetical scenarios involving criminal cases were mailed to 2 prosecutors and 2 defense attorneys in each of 47 states. Information was manipulated such that probability of conviction was either 20, 50 or 80%, and the severity of the sentence if the case went to trial was either 2 or 5 yrs. Prosecutors had to decide whether to offer a 1-yr plea-bargain sentence whereas defense attorneys had to decide whether to accept such a sentence. Results show that as the severity of sentence and probability of conviction increased, prosecutors became less willing to plea bargain whereas defense attorneys became more willing. Also evident in the data was a prosecutor bias in favor of plea bargaining and a defense attorney bias in favor of trials. (9 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Therapeutic jurisprudence, preventive law, and creative problem solving: An essay on harnessing emotion and human connection.

Combining the principles of therapeutic jurisprudence, preventive law, and creative problem solving reveals an overuse by legal professionals of a "judging" problem-solving style that emphasizes the problem-solving tools of order, power, and normative expectation. It neglects—sometimes even suppresses—human emotion and interpersonal relationship, which are also important tools for solving problems. In contrast, psychologists often use an "accommodation" style of problem solving that emphasizes emotion and human connection. Legal professionals could be more effective and contribute importantly to community discourse were they to incorporate the accommodation style more frequently in legal problem solving. Doing so poses some threat to formal equality and due process, but therapeutic jurisprudence and preventive law scholarship offer promising examples for reconciling the accommodation style with traditional liberal values. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

The district attorney's dilemma: Experimental games and the real world of plea bargaining.

The lack of effectiveness of the prisoner's dilemma (PD) game is attributed to the departure from the original model involving 2 suspects and a district attorney. PD research is examined in the light of an actual murder case that involved its basic constituents. Suggestions are made for shifting the focus of PD research back to the original paradigm to widen the range of issues covered and increase its relevance to the criminal justice system. (34 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A therapeutic jurisprudence approach to the legal processing of domestic violence cases.

Ample research indicates that the laws, policies, and legal actors involved in domestic violence cases can achieve iatrogenic or therapeutic effects on both offenders and victims. This article explores the ways in which the legal system reinforces maladaptive behavior by offenders and victims and how it can influence changes in such behavior through legal mechanisms. The therapeutic jurisprudence perspective is used to examine the psychology of offenders who commit domestic violence crimes in Part I. Part II explores the psychology of domestic violence victims. Part III covers the impact of the arrest and prosecution stages of the criminal justice system. Trials, plea bargains, and sentencing issues are explored in Part IV, and the use of restraining orders is explored in Part V. These issues and the therapeutic jurisprudence perspective can inform law reform efforts, criminal justice policy, and mental health policy. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Sexual predators and the structure of the mental health system: Expanding the normative focus of therapeutic jurisprudence.

This article clarifies the normative focus of therapeutic jurisprudence and the sense in which that research program is appropriately considered normatively neutral. It then examines the principles of political morality underlying mental health law as health care and as social control. It advances a proposed structure of mental health law and of the mental health system that reflects these principles. Finally, it applies this analysis to recent cases involving sexual predators, concluding that these cases and the statutes on which they are based undermine the moral force of mental health law and of the more comprehensive institution of social control including the criminal law. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Preface: A new model for the practice of law.

In this Preface, the guest editors of this special theme issue describe the new therapeutic jurisprudence–preventive law model that the issue illustrates and analyzes. They also discuss the organization of the special issue and summarize its contents. Finally, they discuss the significance of the special issue to lawyers, legal educators, and psychologists and other social scientists. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Reactance theory and therapeutic paradox: A compliance-defiance model.

Instances of noncompliance or resistance to influence in psychotherapy have been interpreted as "reactance phenomena" that derive from a motive to restore threatened behavioral freedoms. While reactance is commonly seen as a negative, complicating factor in therapy, reactance phenomena can be used, even mobilized in the service of therapeutic change. In fact, the utilization of reactance provides a rationale for a class of potent paradoxical interventions. It is suggested that there are 2 fundamentally different rationales for using therapeutic paradox. Compliance-based paradoxical strategies effect change by virtue of the client's attempting to comply with a therapeutic directive. Defiance-based interventions, by contrast, work because the client rebels against the therapist's directive. Applications to specific clinical problems are discussed. (20 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Psychological stages of the refugee process: A model for therapeutic interventions.

Proposes to increase understanding of the processes refugees use to forge links with a new culture. C. L. Grove and I. Torbiorn's (1985) theoretical model regarding cultural sojourners was applied to refugees and asylum applicants. Five stages are described through which refugees pass: early arrival, destabilization, exploration and restabilization, return to normal life, and decompensation. Typical refugee experiences, impressions at the initial interview, and therapeutic interventions for each stage are offered. Latin American refugees were the focus of the study, but findings could be applicable to other refugee populations. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Psychology and the law: A symposium.

There has been growing concern in the community at large about the impact of the work of psychologists and other social scientists on various aspects of life. Many people are beginning to believe that effective control over some procedures and restrictions on the use of material obtained by psychological and other investigations may be necessary. What form such control will take depends to a very large extent on the ability of the disciplines involved to make a meaningful statement of their position in matters of such great sensitivity as the invasion of privacy or the utilization of human research subjects in the process of developing knowledge and applying it for the benefit of the individual and society as a whole. In light of these concerns there has been an increase in discussion among psychologists, about the need to explore some of the critical issues as they relate to practice, research, and the legal implications of the work carried out by psychologists. There have been significant and worrying incidences in which research and applied work have been threatened or stopped due to community reaction (or over-reaction, if you wish) to the threat which the "brain watchers" pose for the rights of the individual. In order to provide a forum for discussion of some of these problems it was decided to hold a symposium at the C.P.A. Annual Meeting in Calgary to present issues and to discuss some of the significant aspects which relate to this matter of Psychology and the Law. Dr. Castaneda, who has spent much time studying the ethical problems relating to research, discussed implications for psychologists doing research with human subjects. Mr. Berry explored aspects of practice which are receiving increasing attention in the legal sphere. Professor Desmond Morton of Osgoode Law School attempted to put in perspective some of these issues as they are seen by our legal colleagues. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Advance directives, AIDS, and mental health: TJ preventive law for the HIV-positive client.

Unfortunately, the possibility of future incapacity to engage in health care decision making remains one of the many potential legal problems faced by HIV-positive clients. Consequently, proactive legal planning, including the use of advance directives, is widely recognized as an important element in avoiding legal crisis for HIV-positive persons. The author suggests that, in light of the emotional and psychological difficulties that an HIV-positive client may face, considerations of psychological well-being ought to be explicitly recognized as one priority among many in legal planning. By integrating principles of therapeutic jurisprudence and preventive law, a lawyer can both protect an HIV-positive client's legal rights by planning for legal contingencies and enhance the client's psychological well-being by making emotional concerns one priority in that planning process. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Emotion processing in the criminal psychopath: The role of attention in emotion-facilitated memory.

The response modulation hypothesis specifies that low-anxious psychopathic individuals have difficulty processing information outside their primary attentional focus. To evaluate the applicability of this model to affective processing, the authors had 239 offenders, classified with the Psychopathy Checklist--Revised (R. D. Hare, 2003) and the Welsh Anxiety Scale (G. Welsh, 1956), perform 1 of 3 emotion memory tasks that examined the effects of emotion on memory for primary and contextual information. Regardless of anxiety level, psychopathic and control offenders demonstrated a significant and comparable memory bias for emotional over neutral words in the primary conditions. However, psychopathic individuals showed significantly less memory bias than did controls in the contextual conditions. Results indicate that the impact of emotion on memory is moderated by attentional factors. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Persuasion and the law: A constitutional issue.

Presents an excerpt from a letter (used as Exhibit A in a case) written by the author in response to 2 attorneys' inquiry regarding the psychological evidence for the effectiveness of the order of persuasive arguments in changing opinions. An individual presenting an argument before and after an argument with an opposing viewpoint has the advantage of convincing people of the validity of his/her argument and the lack of validity of the opposing argument. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)