The Practising Law Institute is offering a webcast of a live presentation from San Francisco entitled Representing Clients Struggling With Mental Health 2024 on October 30, 2024 from 12:00 PM-3:45 PM Eastern.

Registration: $129

Full scholarships and discounts to attend PLI programs are widely available to attorneys working in nonprofit/legal services organizations; pro bono attorneys; government attorneys; judges and judicial law clerks; law professors and law students; senior attorneys (age 65 and over); law librarians and paralegals who work for nonprofit/legal services organizations; unemployed attorneys; and others with financial hardships.

All eligible attendees are urged to complete and submit a PLI Scholarship Application.
https://www.pli.edu/probono/pbscholarship

Struggling with your mental health is difficult. Representing individuals who struggle with their mental health can be complicated and rife with difficult discussions. Through this three-hour presentation, Chelsea M. Donaldson, a noted expert on mental health and experienced veterans attorney, will walk through a variety of scenarios of representing people who struggle with their mental health, how to effectively communicate with someone in crisis, and end with a discussion on how to manage an often unwieldy support network while still keeping your oath to your client.

What You Will Learn

After completing this program, participants will be able to:

• Conduct effective conversations with individuals who may be in the throes of a mental health crisis.
• Identify warning signs of those who may be in a mental health crisis.
• Apply different communication strategies to different clients depending on their symptoms, including over the phone.
• Integrate support systems into representation while simultaneously managing attorney-client privilege.

Who Should Attend

Attorneys who work with those most likely to experience a mental health crisis (people in extreme poverty, veterans, LGBTQ+ youth, or other vulnerable populations) will gain insight in how to hone their practice to be more effective in terms of communication.