Dear Elinor,
I’m a family solicitor. Lately I feel like I’m on call around the clock. Clients text me at 9pm, expect same-day replies, and treat every email as urgent because their situation feels urgent to them. I understand why; financial uncertainty and disputes over children are some of the worst moments of a person’s life. But I’m exhausted, and I’m starting to resent the very clients I got into this work to help.
I sometimes wonder if this goes back further than the job itself. My own parents had a messy divorce, and there’s a part of me that still wants to fix things for families going through what mine went through. I don’t know if that’s driving how hard it is for me to switch off, but it feels relevant. How do I hold my boundaries without feeling like I’m letting clients down at the worst possible time?
Overextended in Practice
Dear Overextended,
First, a small confession. If I had a pound for every family lawyer who told me a version of this, I could retire to a very nice house by the sea and never answer another email after 6pm myself. You are in extremely good company!
We know from our work, both as lawyers and as therapists, clients seem to experience time differently when they’re in the middle of a separation. A weekend feels unbearable when you’re waiting on news about your children or your finances, so the request for an instant reply is often just their anxiety being projected out onto you.
One thing that we use in psychotherapy to explain certain dynamics is the Drama Triangle. In any crisis situation, people tend to fall into one of three roles in the Triangle: Victim, Persecutor, or Rescuer. Your clients often arrive in some flavour of Victim, understandably. The trouble starts when the professionals around them, lawyers included, quietly slide into Rescuer. Rescuers answer at midnight and overextend themselves to help the Victim (sounding familiar?!). Rescuers often feel a small hit of validation every time they “save” someone. Rescuers also, eventually, burn out spectacularly and start to resent the very people they were trying to save, viewing their clients as Persecutors. Ironically, being a Rescuer actually disempowers the Victim from being able to support themselves and find their own coping strategies, and the Victim often starts to relabel the Rescuer as a Persecutor. It’s a well-worn triangle, and family law practically hands out free tickets to ride it.
Your parents’ divorce is worth a mention here too. Many people drawn to this work carry some version of your story, a personal understanding of the stakes that makes them both brilliant at the job and also a prime candidate for Rescuer duty. If part of you is still trying to give a different ending to what your own family went through, that’s a lovely instinct and a genuinely useful thing to explore with a therapist whose job is to help you unpack it, rather than have it drive you in the small hours replying to client emails.
None of this means you have to become cold or unavailable. It means separating good client care from personal rescue missions. A few practical ways to start:
- Name the boundary before you need it. Set expectations at the outset rather than mid-crisis. A simple line in your engagement process, such as “I respond to non-urgent queries within one working day,” sets the tone early and saves you from negotiating boundaries while already exhausted.
- Separate urgency from importance. Does the message affect a court deadline, a child’s immediate safety, or an imminent decision? If not, it can wait until your normal working hours, and so can you.
- Offer containment, not availability. A short “I’ve seen this and will respond properly tomorrow morning” often settles a client faster than a rushed reply typed one-handed at the dinner table.
- Notice when you’ve stepped onto the triangle. If you catch yourself feeling like the only person standing between a client and disaster, that’s your cue to step back, not lean in further. Empower your client, don’t rescue them.
- Get proper support, not just coping strategies. This is bigger than a few boundary scripts, especially with your own history in the mix. At The Relationship Therapy Practice we work with many legal professionals who carry exactly this kind of weight, both in one-to-one sessions and through workplace-focused support for law firms. You don’t have to work out the Rescuer pattern alone at your desk.
Understanding your limits and putting in boundaries allow you to keep showing up for your clients. Next time you notice this, can you give yourself permission step off the triangle before it drags you round for another lap?
With best wishes,
Elinor
Elinor Harvey, The Relationship Practice
If this resonates with you, or you have a question you’d like Elinor to answer in a future column, or would like to find out more about her work, you can contact her at [email protected] or visit www.relationshiptherapypractice.com for more info.
