LEGAL REPORT: FAMILY LAW
Maintaining your balance
Family law practitioners have to find a middle ground between becoming too emotionally involved and not caring at all about their clients.
BY HEL EN BURNE T T
the client, everything from matters involving children and parenting to finances. As a result, counsel have to find a way to manage these types of situations, which some say calls for a delicate balance between stay- ing removed and maintaining a level of empathy. While emotional situations are not
W
unique to family law, they are more com- mon in this area, says Halifax family law practitioner Lynn Reierson. "The nature of family practice is your client is highly emotional," she says. "I don't know of another area of law where your client is virtually always highly emotional and then it's just a question of how they deal with that. The extent to which it impacts your day-to-day practice depends from client to client on how they deal with their own emotional stress." Nancy Cameron, a family law
ILLUSTRATION: TODD JULIE www. C ANADIAN Law ye rmag.com JUNE 2008 41
ith few exceptions, all family law issues have the potential to be highly emotional for
