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Abstract

The paradigm of a professional delivering "bad news," while not current in legal counseling, has become an important paradigm in the medical world. Medical professionals see counseling as typically beginning with a diagnosis; and sometimes that diagnosis is upsetting to the patient. Hence oncologists tell patients of their cancer, geneticists tell parents their infant has Down syndrome, and emergency room staff tell relatives about accidents and death. Usually these medical professionals also offer choices- choices among therapies, pain management techniques and support systems. But before the counselor offers alternatives, she must deliver the "bad news." This paper draws upon the medical literature on delivering "bad news" to develop a new paradigm to use in legal counseling. The paper will first review the medical literature about problems in counseling patients about "bad news" and then consider critiques of legal counseling. Next, it will describe the medical model for delivering "bad news" and discuss how it can be used to develop a paradigm for delivering bad news in legal counseling. The paper will consider when and how this "bad news" counseling paradigm should be used in concert with the paradigm of identifying alternatives, predicting consequences and assisting the client to choose a course of action. The paper relies upon social science findings, individual reports and film portrayals of attorney-client counseling sessions to describe and defend this new paradigm for counseling.

Publication Title

Clinical Law Review

Volume

4

Issue

2

First Page

391

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