The Lawyers' Therapist: Annmarie Carvalho

In our first episode, our host Annmarie Carvalho - the lawyers' therapist - switches places and is interviewed by our producer Andrew Keith Walker. She talks about her life as a lawyer and the events that led her to retrain as a mediator and then qualify as a therapist. Annmarie is also an author of Staying Sane in Law, and CEO of TCC, a therapy, training and consulting company - and she talks about the challenges that lawyers face in a world of intense pressure, competition and emotional stress. Her message is simple: you are not alone... and we're all a little bit wonky. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:08

Hi, I'm Annory Carvalho, the lawyers, therapist, and CEO of TCC, the Legal Therapy Coaching and Training Agency. And welcome to Staying Sane in Law, the Fortnightly podcast where we talk about all the gritty realities of life in the law and take a look under the surface at the psychology of what we do in the profession. So every episode I'm in conversation with a different member of the legal profession or the therapeutic community working with lawyers. But today, for our first episode, we're going to do something a little bit different, and I'm going to be interviewed by our crack producer, Andrew Walker.

SPEAKER_00 0:45

Crack producer sounds like, you know, jail is just a heartbeat away. That's as in, you know, um, a crack as in a deadshot. And it's it's the in the term of being a specialist, I like that. I'm not producing crack. If you're listening, uh if you're listening, Met Police, uh, don't come around. It's fine.

SPEAKER_02 1:04

For the avoidance of doubt on this legal podcast, we are not criminals.

SPEAKER_00 1:09

Thanks. Thank you, Anne Marie. Thank you for my introduction. Uh as you know, I host uh a couple of other shows, so I'm I'm more comfortable asking questions than I am answering them. And, you know, I like being the producer as well. That is always great. I'm sort of Roz in the booth uh from uh Frasier, which means you're Frasier.

SPEAKER_01 1:29

Yes, with more hair, um, I guess, and perhaps slightly different political views, but fine.

SPEAKER_00 1:35

I'm nothing like Roz as well. She's definitely got more hair and different political views than me. Okay, listen, let's get to it. Because everyone wants to know your background. You spent more than a decade as a family law solicitor. Um, you've uh then retrained as a therapist. So, what made you swap from being on the inside and being part of the profession to stepping outside it a little ways and then helping people that were were back in your shoes?

SPEAKER_01 2:05

Well, it's interesting. I think it was a gradual process. So, working, I, as you said, I was a family solicitor and specializing in high net worth divorce and children disputes and prenuptial agreements and all that sort of thing. Um, and and many people who are attracted into family law as an area of work are people who are interested in people. It makes sense, right? Does it doesn't it? You know, you're interested in relationships, emotions, difficult relationships. And, you know, that was exactly the same for me. But I think what I realized as time went on was that I was more interested in the people and the relationships than the actual law, and also the actual law and the technicalities of all of that. That wasn't the difficult part of the job. In most cases, the difficulty was dealing with people who were in dispute and uh upset and emotions, and how do you relate to people and try to persuade them of your point of view in situations where they're emotional and angry? And and back in the day, back in those days, we weren't trained in any of those skills. We were trained in technical legal skills, but you know, I really had a sense of where I don't know how to deal with these difficult emotions, but actually I'd love to understand it more. So um I retrained and became a mediator, which is um something quite a lot of people within the family law world do and in other uh areas of the legal profession. Uh, and again, that's a kind of hybrid of legal and therapeutic skills. And then I wanted to go further. Um, and then I began the therapeutic training, and then I was completely hooked. But I think because I'm in the process of interviewing uh lawyers for my second book at the moment, Staying Sane in Law. So what I find interesting when I speak to other lawyers, and this is the same for me as well, is that you kind of arrive at your career through, yes, some intentional choices, but also just chance. You know, someone's uncle was a lawyer, so they got talking to him and thought, oh yeah, that sounds like a profession I want to go into. You know, there it's life events that sort of take you in a certain direction often, I find. And so for me, while all of this was going on, um me and my husband, also a lawyer, were also going through IVF, and I found that incredibly difficult. Um, and so that and I got some support through that, some counselling and was looking at my emotions around that. And again, I thought, actually, you know, this is really interesting. And, you know, that that I wanted to, I guess the therapeutic profession, it felt like a really productive direction to go in. The idea of being able to help other people was attractive to me.

SPEAKER_00 4:43

I mean, I'm interested from the point of view that there is an emotional thread that runs through all of this. You're working as a lawyer in, you know, what is, I think, generally recognized to be one of the most emotionally difficult areas. You then retrain as a mediator, so you can try and you know get people away from the court uh and the adversarial nature of that. Again, though, that's extremely difficult and emotional, uh, trying to get people in the same room to resolve differences that have got to that stage. And then you retrain as a therapist, which is a massive undertaking. Um, and so I I want to know, are you sort of scratching that itch? You want to help people and you want to help them get places. Um but is being a therapist now a chance that you you've sort of found a career where you can do that, but you've got the insight and the tools and the support you need to handle the the amount of emotions that you take on board when you're working in in difficult situations like family law?

SPEAKER_01 5:44

Yeah, it's such a good question. I have so many kind of answers to it, but I guess I do feel like I've scratched that itched to use your phrase. Um, in the sense of, and I was saying this to someone at a family law party last night. Um, there is when you're working as a therapist with clients, there's a sense of immediacy about it. You know, and I'm not saying, you know, you have three sessions and suddenly that person's transformed and everyone runs off skipping into the distance. It's not like that, but that it feels constructive, even when sessions are painful, even when someone's in a very kind of difficult situation, you that you experience that real connection and meaning every day in your work. And that can be overwhelming. You know, quite often I'll come out of sessions and, you know, I'll feel, you know, I need to be careful about the feelings I've taken on. I need to be in regular supervision to get support around that. You know, you take on a lot of things, but you are supported in that. You know, the support is inbuilt into the therapeutic profession. And it it's very, it's a very meaningful job. It I think one of the issues I found with being a family solicitor is that particularly with the more kind of litigious cases, is you were coming to the situation right at the kind of the end of the game in a way. And so you can establish really, you know, important and meaningful connections with your clients. But the I had this realization of the tools I have to deal with these situations are so limited because the dispute has got to a certain stage where it's in the court process or we're in the stage of lawyers' letters, and things are already so entrenched. And I only have legal skills to throw at this, and and there's not that much you can do within that context other than go down the path of court proceedings, et cetera, et cetera. So, which was why retraining as a mediator was very rewarding, because then you see these alternatives and non-court dispute resolution in the family law world in particular has become, you know, a huge thing over the past 10, if not more, years. Um, and yet it is still a struggle for lots of family lawyers I work with to try and help people to go down that path because, you know, people get in entrenched so easily. Um I guess the the other unexpected element of the way my career's gone is I I thought when I started this business eight years ago, it would be working with clients of family law solicitors and family barristers. And it did start out that way. But I think when the pandemic hit, things changed. I got many more lawyer clients, lots of law firms asking for training on how do we stay sane, basically, how do we help our lawyers to uh retain a sense of well-being. And so I realized, oh, I really enjoy working with lawyers and members of the profession. And so it and so it went.

SPEAKER_00 8:35

Digging a little bit deeper into your story. Um there's a version of this where you stayed in family law, you made partner, um, you've got uh a stellar career um as a senior partner in a successful law firm and all the sort of baggage that comes with that. But that didn't happen. You forked in a different direction. Um what what was the sort of the friction point, the inflection point that made you change direction? Was it the the stress of of IVF? You've you've talked about that already. Um or was there were there other things that were sort of creeping into your life that made you feel you needed to make a change?

SPEAKER_01 9:19

I I think it was, I think the IVF was a big part of it. Um I think without realizing it, slowly, slowly I started to want to be myself. It both it bring my sort of personal amory and my work amory closer together. So I it it's funny, isn't it? When you make a change in career, often when you look back and you track back in your life and your earlier life experiences, you realise, oh, of course it was always gonna go this way. You know, of course I was always interested in therapy. When I was um I'm gonna be one of those people now who mentions that they went to Oxbridge because you know, people who went to Oxbridge, we love to talk about how we went to Oxbridge.

SPEAKER_00 10:03

Um and you've you've actually managed to go this far into the podcast without mentioning it. Now I'm gonna say now, in my experience, that's actually several times longer than many Oxbridge lawyers manage to get before they tell you they they went to Oxbridge. So I think you've done well. The the therapy's working.

SPEAKER_02 10:21

Thank you. You know, of course, uh an incredibly clever person.

SPEAKER_01 10:26

No, um, yes, it it is uh I just casually dropped it in there. Um, but what the the reason, all in all honesty, the reason for mentioning it, I promise, is um when I was at I can't stop laughing now at Oxford. Um that was my first experience of therapy because loads of people at Oxbridge are massively insecure, feel incredibly stupid because you go to this university and you're like, oh wow, everyone is a genius. I am a complete imbecile. Um, and also I discovered, you know, well, I'd discovered alcohol before then, but alcohol and boys and you know, the whole kind of shebang. So I had therapy at university for a while. Um, and that was my first exposure to therapy. And then I'd had bits of it, you know, through my 20s. Um, and you know, I was a big, I was a big drinker, you know, like lots of people in those days. Um, and what I realized, you know, going into my twenties is it was a coping mechanism for me, but it wasn't healthy, you know. I was the the kind of you know, the one you'd be trying to drag out of the club at the end of the night, shouting at the bouncers and just behaving like an idiot. Um, and I'm being a little bit flippant, but really it it did uh contribute, you know, it contributed, intersected, I guess, with depression and anxiety. And um, and so I got sober. I got sober at 26. And um, and again, you know, doing that and going through that process of recovery, there's lots of therapeutic principles involved. Um, and it became the sort of foundation for my life. So I guess, you know, the I guess the IVF was the catalyst or the the difficulty, it was a catalyst for thinking, actually, you know, I think the therapeutic world might be for me. But when you look back, there were lots of things along the way that meant I was probably always going to go in that direction.

SPEAKER_00 12:22

Specifically, though, what were the signals that you were ignoring when you were a lawyer uh that were sort of pushing you? I mean, uh, were they detectable? Did you have this sort of feeling that this wasn't for you? How long did it take you to sort of wake up to that and decide, no, you're going to retrain and and you know, move into mediation and then therapy?

SPEAKER_01 12:44

I think it was probably over the course of a few years. I think, you know, law is a very hierarchical profession. And there are, I'm not, you know, criticizing that. There are good reasons for that. There are, you know, it it's intellectually rigorous. There is a sense of kind of working your way up from trainee or pupil and working your way up in into, you know, post-qualification, and you know, kind of earning your stripes, and so sitting there and taking notes in meetings and kind of soaking it all up and listening to these incredibly clever senior lawyers that you work with. Um, but I guess over time what I realized was that that kind of hierarchy and that it it didn't it didn't really suit me very well. I started, I guess I started to get a bit gobbier. I got started to get a little bit more opinionated and really interested in this idea that, you know, I think, particularly in this country, we um we can be quite punitive in the way that we deal with things. We can be, you know, in Australia, for example, they have relationship centres and people who are in uh happy relationships uh often go for relationship therapy in relationship centres, even if there's not a serious problem going on. Uh it's just kind of inbuilt into the culture, you know, that's my understanding anyway. Whereas I think in in this country, it's very much you don't get support until you're at end stage, you know, until things are going really, really wrong. And then you go straight to the lawyers and then you're whipped into this kind of legal process. Um, and so I just became more interested in wanting to try and change the system and and and thinking about better ways in which we could do things. And so um, you know, when I was writing lawyers' letters and going to very formal meetings and all this, you know, there would be a there was a part of me that was growing inside thinking, can't we just deal with this more informally? Can't we just be a bit more human about this? And that's not to criticize family lawyers in the way that they do things, but I think I was just stepping outside of the system in my mind and questioning it more and more.

SPEAKER_00 14:56

Let's say there's a lawyer listening to this now, and what you've just said is really resonating with them. Um it's it's a difficult realization to come to that actually there might be another pathway they could take. Um, what would you say to them? What would you maybe, going back in time, say to your younger self if you met young party Amory, uh pre-sober, um, you know, what maybe you'd have to wait for her to, you know, wait until the morning. You give us some alcohol so what are you gonna say to her? Or you're talking to Amory, who, you know, is sitting there thinking actually this is by the time it gets to court, it's too late. Let's say you're starting to come to that realization yourself. What would what would you know Amory now travel back in time and say?

SPEAKER_01 15:41

I would say what I say to clients in therapy now, who, you know, a lot of whom are um family lawyers, which is I think if you have a I think trust your instinct um and get to know yourself a little bit more. But don't ignore that kind of little voice inside. And I think what I did, and and what I always say to clients is if you have a feeling that you want to do things differently and you're not quite in the right place, then spend 10 minutes every day researching what's out there, sending emails, asking to go for coffee with people whose careers you admire, asking for Zoom meetings, little by little, just trying to kind of put yourself in different worlds. Um, because the tricky thing about the legal profession is a lot of people in the legal profession who some of whom are not happy and want to try something else and diversify find it very, very difficult to believe that they have any transferable skills or can do anything else or that there are any other options. I think it's because it becomes quite siloed quite early on, quite specialized quite early on. Uh, and that kind of insecurity I think a lot of lawyers have about their own abilities makes people feel like they don't have any choices. And that's not true. I'm not saying it's easy, but you know, you do have choices, you do have transferable skills. So I think it's about putting yourself around people who are working and living in a way which you admire, and then you start to see the possibilities. I think for family lawyers in particular, it's a little bit easy these days because um you have, you know, more people qualify as mediators, you know, as I mentioned at a slightly earlier stage. Um there's child-inclusive mediation, reflective supervision, which is um is a bit like therapy, uh, but is basically kind of reflective practice sessions have become much more common in the family law world where you will have sessions with a supervisor who may or may not be therapy therapeutically trained, um, who where you can talk about your emotions about the job, process those a little bit, and that gives you an opportunity to uh understand yourself a little bit more as well. Um, so there are um different outlets for different parts of you uh that you can explore. Um, and so yeah, that's my key message, little and often just keep kind of moving, moving in that direction. And then one day you wake up and go, oh wow, actually I've I've come quite a long way here, and I can see there are options here.

SPEAKER_00 18:16

And with those options, you got out and retrained. Um, was that everything you expected? It I'm guessing that you may look back at that with rose-tinted glasses a little bit. How was it at the time? Do you remember it being tougher than you imagined?

SPEAKER_02 18:32

Yes, and I mean you probably know this, aren't you?

SPEAKER_01 18:36

And your wife is a clinical psychologist. Can I say that? Um, okay. And again, I was talking to somebody about this yesterday, he's in the middle of their training. The the therapeutic training and trying to combine that with a legal career was insane looking back. Combining that, those two things with IVF as well was also insane. Um, but I got hooked, and that's what you find with people when they do therapeutic training. Many people just get hooked and think this is this is it. It's very emotionally demanding in a way that's difficult to explain to people who haven't done it. You are required to look at yourself in very deep ways, which means the training is quite provocative in many ways. You know, group process sessions and people telling you, you know, I always remember this uh session we did on my training where everybody in the group had to tell each other what their first impressions were of each other when they first met, uh and to not hold back. And that was very, very exposing. I remember it created this kind of explosive group dynamic because people tell you things you don't want to hear, you know, that's what it's like. And, you know, some again, the group sessions that we had on um erotic transference and you know, working with sexual issues with clients, where I regressed into this kind of embarrassed 12-year-old girl, just kind of I can't talk about this. Um, you know, having come from quite a formal legal environment. So it tests you and it stretches you in ways that you can't really imagine. Um, but but I'm glad I'm glad about that because when you work with people therapeutically, it's very relational. The way I work is very relational. So we have a relationship, you know, they get to know because I do social media and all these sorts of things, they get to know me a little bit as well. And so I need to understand what's going on for me in those relationships, because otherwise I'm putting all sorts of stuff out there that I'm not aware of. And, you know, I I'm a bit wonky as much as you know anybody else. So I need to keep my stuff in check.

SPEAKER_00 20:52

I'm glad you got to the wonky part there, because let's say, you know, this is episode one of a series that, you know, is going to run and run. Um there's lots of interesting people in this industry that you know uh who have got interesting stories to tell about their own experiences in the legal profession uh and dealing with all the topics you've covered today to do with sort of the emotional impact and the stress and the strain and juggling your real life. What what do you want the lawyers listening to this show and well everyone listening to this show to take away from uh an episode of Staying Sane in Law?

SPEAKER_01 21:30

I want them to know that they're not alone. That's really cheesy, isn't it? But I I want people to understand that they are not alone. And that's the the reason I self disclose in the way that I do, for example, is not because I'm a massive narcissist. Although, hey, maybe I am a massive narcissist. It's not that it's calculated, but it is a way of saying to people look, everybody that you see out there has got some stuff going on, you know. Everybody's got problems, everyone's got stuff they need to work on. You know, you it law is a very sort of presentational profession. You know, everyone kind of has their best foot forward and feels they need to look in control all of all of the time. And there's no getting away from that. Like you have to, you know, you need your clients to have faith in you and confidence in you. But we are real, you know, we're human beings as well. And so what I want, and this is why this show is in an interview style, it's conversational, it's not a sort of dry legal podcast. It's just is to have these tricky conversations with people about, you know, how did you get to where you got to, you know, what stuff went on in your personal life that affected your decisions, you know, how do you cope on a day-to-day basis? It's the real stuff, it's the gritty stuff, I think, that I'm that I think is helpful for people to hear about. You know, we've had a laugh today, and I think that's really important. But I see, you know, every day in my work the the difficulties and the tricky things that go on within the profession and the tragedies as well, you know, um the deaths and and addiction and you know, client deaths, and there's lots of really, really tough things that go on. And I think we do, you know, we talk about well-being in the profession now, but we have to really, really focus on this because it is a profession where it's very easy to feel very isolated at certain points. And I do think that if you are a clever, intelligent person with a fast moving brain and who's kind of generally quite highly geared, your brain will take you into some dark places at times. And so you need proper support to help kind of bring you back from there and help you feel less alone. So there is a really serious side to this, which is we're here and we're being informal and chatting about things because we want to normalize the fact that, like I say, we're all a bit wonky. Think in practical ways about what helps people and like I say, help people to feel like they're not alone because we all have dark times.

SPEAKER_00 24:09

Yeah. And it's, you know, it's A, you're not a narcissist. Or I think we should probably do a disclaimer at the end, other narcissists are available and we're not making crack. That's number one. I think number two, um, it's cheesy saying you're not alone when it's on a cat poster, I guess. But you know, the the truth is knowing that you're not alone actually is is really important for people. I think I didn't think you were cheesy at all. I I'm I'm totally on board with not knowing I'm not alone. I mean, I am. I I'm a uh producer in a uh working in a studio alone all day long. So I am alone, but you know, digitally I have lots of friends. I'm gonna leave that that sounds terrible, doesn't it? Um I'll book a session with you. I'll book a session with you for after, because Lordy, it's all I'm gonna I'm gonna I'm tearing up now. Um you and your digital friends. Me and my my digital friends. And um if you could see this side of the studio, you you see on here the side of the studio where it's all mixing desks and cables and soundproofing. The bit I'm looking at is full of Lego and uh Star Wars toys and stuff. So trust me, they're way too much information. Now, talking about too much information, there are some other things we need to talk about here very quickly before the end of the show because time is drawing to a close. But staying sane in Family Law, the book you wrote, came out last year. Um, it's been, I think it's fair to say it's been a huge success. I think also, if it wasn't a huge success, you wouldn't be the FT's legal agony aunt uh on the hugely successful and widely read FT newsletter, which I know you hate me mentioning, but you know, I have to mention it because it's it's very if you don't, if you're not the FT's legal agony aunt, it's very cool. I'm gonna say that it's very cool.

SPEAKER_01 25:51

You don't mention I went to Oxford, by the way.

SPEAKER_00 25:54

Yeah, so sorry. No, I don't think you did. So um uh I I want to know if people want more M RE, where can they go and get it?

SPEAKER_02 26:03

What a horrible thought.

SPEAKER_01 26:05

If people want more Mory, I'm sorry. Okay, I'm gonna focus now. Um you can find me at my website, cavallo therapy.com. So it's spelled C-A-R-V-A-L-H-O-Therapy.com. Uh also on LinkedIn. Uh people will know I spill all my uh guts on LinkedIn on a regular basis. So that's um linkedin.com forward slash in forward slash amory carvallo forward slash. Uh they can find me here at our on our podcast at BuzzSprout, I believe.

SPEAKER_00 26:39

That is right. Sayinginlaw.buzzsprout.com is a short code for that. Uh you can find it there. And I'm going to say now with my producer hat on, on all good podcasting platforms, go to your uh Spotify or your Apple Podcasts or your Pocket FM or whatever it is you're using, Deezer, it's on that as well. We're on everything. And look for Staying Sane in Law with Amory Carvalho. Great! Okay, well that's good. Now listen, it's your show. So I'm going to step back now and hand the sign off back to you.

SPEAKER_01 27:14

Goodness, thank you so much, Anjune. Thank you everybody for listening. And um please join us next time for the next episode of Staying Sane in Law. And in the meantime, remember, we're all a little bit wonky. Thank you, everyone.

SPEAKER_00 27:35

That's great. We should do a radio show.

SPEAKER_02 27:37

We should do a radio show, but introducing you as a crack producer.

SPEAKER_00 27:42

I love that. We have to keep that in.