Legal processes can be traumatic, for both the client and the legal professional. Think divorce proceedings, or expert witness work. A recent review of the family law/psychology literature demonstrates a shift in thinking around this trauma, with the potential impact now more recognised, and increasingly at the forefront of practice (Mason, 2025). Search ‘law services and trauma’ online and you’ll see how pretty much every law firm advocates for collaboration with mental health professionals. But there has been little work to really describe the best practice principles of how this work is to be done.

It’s true there have been collaborations between law firms and psychotherapy services, resulting in the development of guidelines for how to support both legal professionals and their clients when working with trauma (e.g. divorce).

For example, Payne Hicks Beath in consultation with the Montrose Health Group, and Mishcon de Reya in consultation with the Tavistock NHS, developed the ‘Vulnerable Clients Guide for Legal Professionals’: a ‘traffic light’ tool, designed for law professionals to help identify and signpost clients who are struggling with separation and divorce. This project also produced the ‘Vulnerable Clients Survival Guide’. A resource for service-users, it focuses on psychoeducation around separation and divorce; basic self-care tips; and details which mental health professionals are available to support them (e.g. GPs, psychiatrists and psychologists). Similarly, Burgess-Mee and Rosefield Divorce Consultancy have worked with Innisfree Therapy, to develop specific trauma-training for their lawyers and a resource for service-users called ‘Within the Window‘.

Whilst projects such as these have enhanced the growing awareness of the need for interdisciplinary work, the professionals still remain largely in their respective silos. Initiatives generally stem from the legal side (Barber-Rioja et al. 2022). In practice, a psychologist’s contact with a service-user often comes from their lawyer simply giving them contact details.

Here, we seek to show how, in collaboration with the law firm Stewarts, we have progressed the already existing ‘interdisciplinary’ work to incorporate a more extensive, truly ‘hands-on’ integrative consultation process. In using our consultation framework, we have repeatedly found that we are able to better support people going through complex legal processes in a more cohesive, effective, efficient and sustainable way, from legal, fiscal and mental health perspectives. We will briefly share examples of the interdisciplinary work we have done and ultimately share our formula for how to navigate this new area.

Interdisciplinary work in family law

Importantly, the model we describe has been used primarily in collaboration with family law professionals. These industries both work with relationships, often in trauma, albeit in functionally different and yet, complementary ways.

Here are some examples of the interdisciplinary work we have done:

• Supporting the development of child arrangements – often referred to as ‘custody’ arrangements – based on the understanding we hold of the complex psychological needs of the family system we are working with (e.g. highlighting the specific attachment difficulties of children with neurodivergence and what custody arrangements may best fit their needs).
• Supporting the financial settlement process by exploring the psychological gains and detriments of a particular settlement for the individual (e.g. a legal financial win may actually be a psychological weapon or loss: bridging the divide by collaboratively pooling knowledge and support); or helping to understand and navigate the complex relationship dynamics of the couple, by speaking with one or both legal sides, and alerting them to potential potholes in the process.
• Being involved in client-lawyer consultations to support service-users with not feeling pressured by their own lawyers (e.g. to agree to a financial settlement that they do not feel comfortable with, even though legally entitled), to feel seen and understood in the process, and to consider the impact (including risk assessment) of legal documents on service-user mental health.
• Reciprocal signposting – family lawyers introducing therapy professionals to other legal professionals (e.g. corporate lawyers) and therapists introducing to other health professionals (e.g. bringing in Occupational Therapists as appropriate, and acting as liaison to link everything up).
• Helping formalise family trust/succession arrangements, by highlighting the complex psychological factors at play.
• Supporting service-users by presenting lawyers with evidence of abuse or coercive control from their separating partner and making clear collaborative interventions for how this can ensure safety from both legal (e.g. safeguarding and formal mandates) and psychological perspectives. This one is more frequent than not – often there is a lot of shame around divorce and the build-up to it (Gerstel, 1987). And so, as therapists we are often privy to stories that service-users will either not feel able, willing or consider appropriate to disclose to their lawyers (e.g. ‘the lawyer is not interested in my ex’s behavior, only in my financial settlement’). We have found that with our support, this disclosure can be made in a collaborative way, which in turn leads to legal gains and often therapeutic reparation (i.e. the legal process gives an opportunity to do something differently, and so you get a chance to heal an earlier wound).
• Assisting a service-user to put into words their experience of the relationship for the purposes of a witness statement in the legal process (often particularly helpful for service-users who have experienced a coercive or controlling relationship).
• Preparation for hearings – including witness box preparation to reduce anxiety, attending court in a supportive capacity, for both service-user and legal team.
• Receiving education around what the legal position is – the consultation goes both ways in this interdisciplinary format. We have found that it can prove useful to the therapeutic process if we have first-hand knowledge from the lawyers about what the actual legal truth is, rather than the service-user’s experience of the legal truth. For example, really understanding what they may be financially giving up and whether this is in the best interests of their mental health longer-term, which is a commonly observed clinical pattern when there has been a relational history of subjugation.

These experiences have informed our Best Practice Guidelines for Psycho-Legal Collaboration, built around the following.

Foundational Conditions (trust, boundaries)

The most important variable we have found in working in this interdisciplinary way is having a good working relationship between legal and psychological professionals. Specifically, cultivating trusting relationships where we feel genuinely respectful of each other’s expertise and separate lanes, whilst maintaining the professional and ethical boundaries of our respective silos.

Working in a therapeutic team at the Blue Door where we really value and exercise multidisciplinary thinking and working in all that we do, it was an easy stretch to expand this relational working to our non-therapy colleagues. But we appreciate that for many psychology professionals, the very idea of speaking with other therapists may feel uncomfortable and/or unfamiliar, let alone engaging with those in a completely separate profession. Spend time understanding of each other’s specific professional boundaries, remits and more general organisational culture to safely and constructively navigate the interdisciplinary work in a collaborative way. This relationship-building takes time. We have found giving joint-presentations of case studies across the teams, with either a predominantly legal or therapeutic lens, can be a helpful tool in this regard.

Initiation Pathways (lawyer-led, therapist-led)

Historically, interdisciplinary work has been lawyer-led: we want to address the lesser-trodden path of therapist-led consultation. We hold an invaluable resource in supporting our service-users by knitting information together and educating our service-users about how we can support them in their legal process. Sometimes it is enough to tell the person that a therapeutic disclosure may be helpful information for the lawyers to hear. This is an example of indirect interdisciplinary working, where the service-user would then share the information with their legal team. 

The therapist initiating engagement with the lawyer typically will be an individual therapist – not a couples therapist. This would risk therapeutic division, especially when couple therapy is ongoing (e.g. in supporting to navigate co-parenting). The one exception is when the couple has directly requested that the couple therapist speak with both legal teams to help them develop child custody arrangements because of their intimate knowledge of the coupledom dynamic, for instance.

Modes of Collaboration (consultation, ongoing, ad hoc)

The interdisciplinary work can include one-off consultations; regularly scheduled events (e.g. at various points in the divorce/financial/children proceedings or negotiations) and/or ad hoc events (e.g. when an emergent need arises, such as risk concerns). It’s best to be flexible, on a case-by-case basis, and always in collaboration with the service-user. As psychotherapists we have listened for when there might be an indicated need for interdisciplinary work (e.g. acrimonious divorce; custody battles; concerns about money being withheld from one spouse; coercive control being perpetuated through the legal process) and will educate our service-users about how we might be able to support the legal process through interdisciplinary work, directly (i.e. meet with their legal team) and indirectly (e.g. encouraging them to share specific disclosures with their legal team). 

Ethical Safeguards (consent, confidentiality, safeguarding)

The service-user does not have to be present – this is something that is discussed prior to agreeing to work in this way. In our experience, both sides check this out pretty early on with the client/service-user, to get their views on attendance or not. The norm is typically for the service-user to be present, so that communications are transparent and the service-user has real-time appreciation of the protecting of professional boundaries. There have been some occasions where the service-user has elected not to be present during interdisciplinary conversations (e.g. because they find it too emotionally dysregulating). 

In all cases, it’s vital to consider with the service-user what the specific goal/outcome of working in an interdisciplinary way might be? Further, what do they want us to share, versus anything that they may not want shared? It is of course, important to maintain professional confidentiality and to obtain written consent agreeing the terms of engagement before embarking on interdisciplinary work. This is as much about protecting them in the legal process as it is about protecting yourself as a clinician and the therapeutic alliance. You may also find it helpful in advance to talk about how the ‘feel’ of interdisciplinary work may be compared to the therapy space. In this regard, I have presented this as ‘wearing a different, but similar hat’, in that I am still there as a psychologist, but in this forum it is to help update, educate, understand and/or advocate.

Safeguarding issues remain a primary ethical consideration to hold in mind and interdisciplinary working does not change how you would ordinarily function within your professional remit. That being said, when working within an interdisciplinary framework, the sharing of any safeguarding concerns can help contain and streamline potentially expanding professional involvement (e.g. Social Services assessments can be facilitated by being made aware of all the key stakeholders).

Clinical Integration (follow-up, supervision)

As therapists, we would always do a check-in with the service-user following the interdisciplinary work, either immediately after the consultation concludes or at their next scheduled appointment. It of course adds another dimension to the therapeutic role and what you are holding, and in this regard, we would strongly encourage professional supervision – on both sides (legal and psychological) in whatever format that takes – in unpacking what comes up both in the interdisciplinary work and also the therapy work itself. We have found having someone with a relational lens (e.g. a systemic therapist) particularly useful in this supervisory position as they are trained to look at inter-relational systems. Research suggests that law professionals are also adopting psychotherapy style supervision to navigate client needs and their own wellbeing (e.g. Mason, 2025).

Fee-charged service

All involved professionals charge for their interdisciplinary work. As therapists, we charge for our time at our therapeutic hour (50 minutes) rate, pro rata. There is of course a higher short-term cost involved in doing this work, but in our and Stewarts’ experience, if done well this collaborative and streamlined approach facilitates psychological and financial gains for the service-user in the longer-term. Again, any financial constraints and/or concerns are discussed and agreed with service-users before any sort of interdisciplinary work can proceed.

Limitations and ethical risks of interdisciplinary practice

Our primary role remains protecting the therapeutic alliance, and service-user safety and wellbeing. I see this work as an extension of my role, but I do not step into it blindly. I introduce and explore interdisciplinary work before embarking on it. The risks (e.g. rupture in the therapeutic alliance; role confusion; dual relationships) are all reduced if it is handled with thoughtfulness and attention.

We have had ethical conversations about navigating patient confidentiality alongside legal privilege, and how they fit together. The consensus is that if we have consent for what we have shared, then we have respected patient-confidentiality and so the therapeutic relationship is theoretically protected. Stewarts have clarified, that in circumstances where a therapeutic professional is in attendance at meetings held between the service-user and their legal advisor for the purposes of giving or obtaining legal advice, legal privilege will attach to those communications (and would also attach in circumstances where the therapeutic professional is acting as agent for the service-user in meetings with the legal advisor at which the service-user is not present).

Those times when interdisciplinary working has been least successful are when there is a blurring into each other’s lanes (e.g. a lawyer dismissing the therapeutic expertise and adopting a pseudo-psychologist role or the therapeutic professional not understanding the legal framework in which decisions are being made by the service-user) and so, not being respectful, informed and/or trusting of the other’s expertise. Interestingly, service-users really pick up on this dynamic, and will then often sever contact with one of the professionals. Often, because of a strong therapeutic alliance, this has meant departing from their legal representation, which can of course hinder, rather than help, the process.

The other obstacle is making it clear that interdisciplinary working is not introducing a set-up where the therapist could be called as an expert-witness. This could be incredibly harmful to the therapeutic alliance – not to mention costly to the process. The consultation work we are describing here is more background, not foreground, and so is about understanding and supporting, not testifying. Stewarts’ view here is that if needed, an independent therapeutic expert would be appointed.

A ‘both/and’ intervention

Legal processes are stressful, and at times, traumatic (Barwell, 2024). By adopting a truly interdisciplinary approach, service-users have reported a sustained beneficial impact on mental health. We have also seen that it can help move the legal process along more swiftly (e.g. when there is a large degree of ambivalence regarding the divorce, created by paralysing guilt and shame). We frequently receive referrals for people who seem to get ‘stuck’ in a protracted legal process and mount up significant legal bills. Here, they can be seen as being difficult/obstinate by their own and/or the opposing legal team, which in turn exacerbates ‘stuckness’. 

Therapy has such an important role in helping to be with the trauma of a relationship and its ending, and in educating/supporting our legal partners on what is psychologically happening for their client, in order to assist and shift the legal process along, and to marry-up psychological needs alongside legal entitlements. What I’ve proposed here is a multifaceted ‘both/and’ (McNamee & Gergen, 2002) intervention – a golden relational principle we are always aspiring to maintain in therapeutic change.

Dr Kate Younger is a Chartered Psychologist and Associate Fellow of the British Psychological Society. She is also a CAT, EMDR and IFS Therapist. With thanks to Tanya Haynes (Director of the Blue Door Practice); Sophie Chapman (Partner, Stewarts Law Firm) and Leyla Aras (Trainee Solicitor, Stewarts Law Firm) for their contributions to this article.

This article was first published by the British Psychologist Society website: https://www.bps.org.uk/psychologist/we-are-able-better-support-people-going-through-complex-legal-processes

References

Barber-Rioja, V., Akinsulure-Smith, A.M. & Vendzules, S. (2022). Mental Health Evaluations in Immigration Court, Chp 8, Special Considerations for Collaboration Between Lawyers and Mental Health Professionals, NY: New York University Press.

Barwell, J. (2024). The Psychological Toll of Legal Battles: A Litigant in Person’s Journey, www.legallens.org.uk

Gerstel, N. (1987). Divorce and Stigma, Social Problems, 34(2), 172-186.

Mason, M. (2025). From psychotherapy to legal practice: the use of clinical supervision by lawyers in England and Wales, Psychiatry, Psychology and Law, 32(6), 898-917.

McNamee, S. & Gergen, K.J. (2002). Therapy as a Social Construction. London: SAGE Publications.