The lawyer’s therapist: Turning legal insights into emotional clarity
From lawyers, now therapists, a new business model of trying to get City lawyers to open up.
Who can truly understand what it’s like to be a lawyer other than someone who has walked in their shoes, as The Carvalho Consultancy (TCC) likes to say?
Speaking to City PM, founder of TCC, Annmarie Carvalho says: “Someone called us ‘law’s best kept secret’, because she said we are keeping most of the lawyers in the City sane without people knowing about it.”
Previously, Carvalho was a family lawyer for over 10 years at Farrer & Co., where she worked on high-net-worth divorces.
Carvalho says her work in family law helped her to learn how to be more psychologically informed to tackle the difficult human side of her practice.
While training to become a family mediator, she realised she was far more interested in people.
She put down her timesheets in 2018 and picked up her notepad when she set up TCC.
The agency has been a resounding success, and will soon have nine consultant therapists, all former lawyers, ranging from ex-family law, corporate, and in-house.
Advising the advisers
Given their sector’s highly competitive, unforgiving reputation lawyers have traditionally been notoriously difficult to coax onto the shrink couch. But, as HR departments try to change the industry’s culture, Carvalho has found that lawyers’ previous reticence is starting to change.
This is partly down to the firm’s direct approach. “We cut the BS when it comes to training, counselling and coaching,” she stated.
She explained that the firms her agency works with entitle team members, partners, and staff to up to two sessions a month.
For the agency, it is also much more than providing the services. It has to be easy to access, allowing the busy lawyers, many working 18-hour days, to talk over the phone, in person, or on screen.
“I’d say generally, our client base is about 65 per cent female and 35 per cent male,” Carvalho explains.
There’s a push to try and get male partners to open up, and younger men, the counsellor says, are leading the way.
‘I’m listening’
Despite their well-documented high pay packets and fearsome reputations, City lawyers often have to make significant sacrifices.
Working long hours, dropping personal plans for clients, and, at times, working in a high-strung environment is the price they have to pay for success.
In addition to these challenges, City law firms operate in a competitive market with a keen eye on profit, so clients are the priority.
This can lead to clashes with both clients and partners.
Carvalho said that while firms have drawn up well-being policies, many are vague, which can often lead to tricky situations.
She explained that a “classic scenario which comes up in every firm” is having a partner “who’s an absolute nightmare, and no one does anything about it”, often because they’re one of the firm’s key fee earners.
That’s where the TCC’s sector-wide experience comes into play. The firm can “talk the talk, because we’ve walked the walk”.
“Our therapeutic approaches are infused with hard-edged practicality and a huge dollop of humour – sometimes of the gallows variety,” Carvalho adds.