Who I Work With
Couples Therapy for Attorneys and Legal Professionals
90-minute private Zoom sessions built around your schedule.
What this career does to a relationship
Law trains you to win the point in front of you, and a marriage is a different kind of room. The habits that make you effective in a conference room can quietly injure the person you go home to. I work with associates, partners, litigators, and in-house counsel on that collision. Do you hear a feeling from your partner as a claim you need to rebut?
Billable hours
The day is counted in tenths of an hour, and the number rarely feels like enough, so at home your partner experiences the target as a rival that gets the last word about dinner, bedtime, and the weekend. We look at what that number has been allowed to decide in the relationship, and what you want back.
Trial weeks and travel
A trial takes the whole person. You are gone, or you are home and still in the courtroom, running the examination in your head at the sink, and travel for a deposition does the same thing in smaller pieces. The relationship needs a plan for those weeks that is sturdier than an apology after the verdict.
Partnership-track years
The years before partnership ask you to be available to the firm first, and couples often make a deal they never say aloud: endure this, and then we will have a life. The deal keeps getting extended by another review cycle. We put it on the table while it can still be renegotiated.
Cross-examining your spouse
The adversarial habit comes home. You hear a feeling as a claim to rebut, and the questions get sharper until your partner feels cornered, which they may accurately call cross-examining your spouse. I will stop it in the session and help you stay with the feeling instead of dismantling it.
Control and certainty
Control and certainty are virtues in the job, and at home they can flatten a partner who needs room to be unsure, to change their mind, or to not have a position yet. Closeness asks for a kind of not-knowing that cross-examination punishes. We practice a different stance in the actual conversation.
Why 90-minute video sessions fit
Ninety minutes matters when one of you has been in argument mode since morning, because a shorter session often ends right as the armor comes off, which is the part worth having.
We meet by secure video, so a hearing day does not also cost you a drive and a chair in someone else's waiting room. You can log on from home, or from the office once the filing is out.
I do not post a clock and call it a promise, because trial weeks wreck a fixed hour. We set the time when the week is actually real.
If something urgent comes up between sessions, I can usually offer priority scheduling.
If you or your partner are in crisis, call or text 988, or call 911.
I am licensed in Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Hampshire and Rhode Island. Regular sessions are virtual. You need to be physically in one of those states when we meet.
If a hearing blows up the plan, we move the session. That is an ordinary week in this work. The sessions still ask something of you between meetings. A court date is real, and we will plan around it instead of scolding you for it.
Privacy
Colleagues from the firm do not need to see you walking into a session. This work does not run through a company health plan. For a lot of lawyers, the chance of being seen at a local office is reason enough to avoid the help.
The practice is private pay, so no insurance claim is filed.
Records stay confidential under HIPAA and state law.
Sessions happen from your own space. There is no waiting room.
If you have questions about what your board or employer asks, check its current wording.
How the work goes
With attorney couples I use Emotionally Focused Therapy, and Gottman Method tools from my Level 3 training come in when a fight has a shape you can learn to catch. I am also trained in Relational Life Therapy.
Lawyers often arrive ready to present the case against their partner, and sometimes against themselves. We slow the sequence that leaves one of you prosecuting and the other defending, until a different move is possible. I am not here to try the question of who is more reasonable.
This practice is couples work. I do not turn the session into two parallel individual cases. If one of you needs your own therapist, I will say so.
Some lawyer couples do better with one concentrated weekend than with a standing series. That format is a weekend intensive in your home, or a place you choose. We only consider it after a consultation about fit. Regular sessions stay on Zoom.
FAQ
Can we schedule around a trial?
Yes. Trial weeks and travel weeks are an ordinary reason to move a session. You do not have to apologize for the docket. Tell me when the calendar locks, and we will put the next meeting where both of you can actually be present.
My partner says I argue like a lawyer. Can that change?
The habit is a trained reflex. I hear some version of that sentence often. In session I interrupt the cross-examination and help you stay with what your partner is saying. Dismantling their point may win the minute. It costs you the person.
Will my firm know I am in couples therapy?
Your firm is not billed, and I do not send the firm a record of our work. The practice is private pay, so no insurance claim is filed. Records stay confidential under HIPAA and state law. Sessions happen from your own space. There is no waiting room. If you have questions about what your board or employer asks, check its current wording.
What if both of us are lawyers?
Then neither of you has someone at home who lives outside the job, and both of you know how to win a point. I work with couples where both partners practice, including one in a firm and one in-house. The work is the marriage. We will look at the argument about whose hours count, because that argument is usually about who counts.
What should we budget for this?
A session is $750 for 90 minutes. The consultation is 30 minutes and costs $100. That fee applies toward your first session if we go ahead. If I am not the right fit, I refund it. The practice is private pay. I do not bill insurance. I can give you a superbill for out-of-network reimbursement.
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$100 consultation, applied toward your first session.
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