Why a Good Lawyer Makes a Lousy Therapist

When you’re feeling sad or angry or confused or frustrated about your divorce, would you rather talk to a professional who is trained to help you through your emotions, to make breakthroughs, and eventually grown and heal, or your lawyer?

Obviously, you’d choose a therapist over a lawyer if you were thinking about it rationally, but in divorce, there are moments in which you’re simply not rational. And you will probably, on occasion, vent to your lawyer over something that happens in the course of your divorce. That’s perfectly normal, and we’ve been there to support clients in those moments.

But we want to make sure our clients know at the outset that we’re not trained as therapists. We’re much better lawyers than we are therapists, and on average, we’re more expensive per hour than a therapist. Your divorce experience will be less costly and less frustrating if you keep your lawyer and your therapist in separate boxes. Your lawyer should be in the box where you talk about your case and how to move forward, and your therapist should be in the box where you work through your emotions.

We’re happy to recommend therapists who work with divorcing women or divorcing men as part of our initial consultation with clients. It’s important for people who are getting divorced to attend to their emotions during the process. It’s hard to know how long it will take you to get over divorce—every person is different, after all—but working on it with a professional while you’re in the midst of it will make it that much easier to move on once your divorce is final.