In this episode of Lawyers as Healers, I’m joined by Holly Hedley, a specialist health, employment, privacy, and human rights lawyer from New Zealand.

Holly is the founder of Dawn Legal and is completing a Borrin Foundation Women Leaders in Law Fellowship exploring trauma-informed legal practice for Aotearoa New Zealand.

Our conversation explores Holly’s move from large-firm practice into her own practice, where she has more freedom to approach legal work in a compassionate, restorative, and human-centered way.

We talk about gender expectations in law, parenting, birth trauma, vicarious trauma, and the often invisible weight lawyers carry from the work they do. Holly shares a powerful story about being stopped in her tracks by a memory from a difficult case while walking with her infant son — a moment that led her to ask deeper questions about trauma, legal work, and what lawyers absorb over time.

A major theme of this conversation is that lawyers are often expected to be detached, rational, and unemotional. But that does not mean we are unaffected. Holly challenges the idea that good lawyering requires us to ignore our own humanity or the humanity of the people we serve.

We also discuss what trauma-informed legal practice can look like in practical terms: understanding boundaries, knowing when to refer clients to other supports, creating space between difficult meetings, using language more carefully, and asking one simple question before sending a letter, submission, or judgment:

How does this land?

At its heart, this episode is about practicing law with clarity, compassion, and power — without pretending lawyers have to become therapists or stop being lawyers.

As Holly puts it, maybe the invitation is simply to find the human way of lawyering that is truly yours.

• Holly’s transition from large-firm practice to Dawn Legal
• trauma-informed legal practice in New Zealand
• gender expectations, parenting, and law firm culture
• why trauma may appear in every area of legal practice
• the myth of the detached lawyer
• supervision, reflection, and better support for lawyers
• boundaries between legal work and therapeutic work
• writing with heart, clarity, and power

Dawn Legal:
https://www.dawnlegal.co.nz/

Trauma-Informed Legal Practice project:
https://www.dawnlegal.co.nz/trauma-informed-legal-practice

Borrin Foundation Fellowship:
https://www.borrinfoundation.nz/women-leaders-in-law-fellowship-for-holly-hedley/

Heart-Centered Judgment:
https://www.qlsproctor.com.au/2025/08/nz-judge-writes-letter-to-child-as-judgment/

Holly Hedley
Founder, Dawn Legal
Specialist health, employment, privacy, and human rights lawyer

Dave Albrechta
Mediator, coach, recovering litigator, and host of Lawyers as Healers

Interested in coaching to transform your practice?

Email dave@tallgrasscollective.org