Abstract
This study investigated the effects of acquiring counseling skills with microcounseling on lawyers. Participants were six lawyers who were asked to acquire paraphrasing, a counseling skill used in microcounseling. The scores of paraphrasing in a pretest, a posttest, and a follow-up test (two weeks later) were compared. In the posttest, the scores of paraphrasing were significantly higher than the scores in the pretest, and it remained at the same level from the posttest to the follow-up test. Furthermore, participants were asked to use paraphrasing in legal counseling between the posttest and the follow-up test. The results suggested that paraphrasing is useful for information arrangement, common understanding, emotional support, and communication facilitation. Additionally, the competence of regulating interpersonal relationship was improved by acquiring paraphrasing. These findings suggest that lawyers are able to acquire counseling skills with microcounseling and acquired counseling skills will work effectively in legal counseling.
