How to Ethically Handle Client Requests for Letters, Evaluations, and Court Related Activities
Sooner or later, a client is going to ask you to write them some kind of letter, be it for work, an emotional support animal, or for a custody case involving their ex. Chances are, you are going to be very tempted to do it because you will want to help. Hold that thought, breathe, and don’t do a thing until you think it through.
Before you respond, here are some good rules to follow.
Never immediately respond to a client request. Take some time to think it through and consult.
It’s always important to talk it through with a colleague before writing anything. If it involves anything court related, you’re going to want to also consult with legal counsel.
Just because they ask doesn’t mean you have to provide.
People often ask us to do things we can’t. It’s not up to them to know our ethics and boundaries, it’s up to us to educate them about those boundaries and hold to them.
Never write anything out of your scope of practice.
While this seems obvious, this is an easy mistake to make if you don’t take some time to think it through and consult.
Be very cautious to make any recommendations regarding emotional support animals.
While emotional support animals may seem harmless, there are emerging cases where people have been injured by them. This goes to scope of practice. Are you qualified to determine if someone needs a support animal? Have you been trained for this? Are you qualified to talk about what type of animal they should have? Are you willing to assume liability risks if the animal injures someone? If not, I wouldn’t write a letter for it.
Never, ever make a statement about someone you have not seen.
This most often happens when a client asks us to write some type of letter related to their parenting or parenting time for a custody issue. You want to help your client and that letter seems like it’s really going to! You may not even realize, by writing the letter, you have now made a recommendation. Yet you’ve never seen them parenting their child, or even met their child. Or their ex. So, you can’t say a thing about any of that. This is one of the quickest ways to get a complaint filed against you. It’s also unethical practice.
Working with parents and children in therapy is fraught with a lot of potential ethical landmines. To find out more about how to avoid the common mistakes therapists make, don’t miss the crucial information in the Master Course and the Mini Course, Clinical Considerations in Private Practice.
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Evaluation is always a separate role.
If you are seeing someone for therapy, you should never write a letter or recommendation in an evaluative capacity. That is a separate role, and you should never mix the two.
It is not uncommon for clients to ask us to complete a disability claim for them. This needs to be completed by a medical doctor because it is a medical determination. It is generally out of our scope of practice.
Any letter you write for an attorney will end up in court or a court motion.
Any letter you give to your client related to any type of court matter or custody dispute will almost certainly end up with their attorney. When that happens, you are likely to be subpoenaed. To find out more about how to successfully deal with attorneys in private practice, make sure you check out the Master Course and the Mini Course, Clinical Considerations in Private Practice.
It’s important for us to educate our clients about their records and court. We need to help them understand that once therapy records are introduced into court, the entire record is subject to being introduced into court. Often, this will not be in your client’s best interest. It’s important that they understand the need to protect the therapy space and their records for themselves and, if their child is the client, for that child.
If you choose to write a letter for a client, be very clear how it will be used.
Specify your role. Make sure it’s within your scope of practice. Back up any claims with factual statements.
Stop and reflect before you act.
While client requests for letters tend to be the most visible issue, any time a client asks us to do something that is outside of our standard way of handling things, we are at risk for messing it up. Learn to stop and reflect before you act.
Be prepared for this to be much harder than you think. We want to help, so when clients ask us to do something to help them, we tend to reflexively say, “Yes!” without stopping to think it through.We ignore our inner warning system in our desire to help the client.
Some of the glaring red flags we tend to bypass:
The temptation to break our own rules and boundaries.
The false belief we must quickly respond to requests.
Trouble saying “no” to a client for some reason.
Always take a breath and consult. Even when you know what to do, sometimes it’s hard. You need someone to tell you, “You know what you should do. Now do it.”.
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