December 3 is International Day of Persons with Disabilities, an annual observance day proclaimed by the United Nations in 1992. In accord with the VTLA Diversity and Inclusion Alliance’s continuing efforts to inform and enable our members to promote diverse and inclusive practices through their work, this month we have chosen to focus on the disability community, a group that often gets overlooked in the Diversity and Inclusion setting. Thanks to Samantha Sledd, co-chair of VTLA's Diversity & Inclusion Alliance for sharing her thoughts below.
Persons with Disabilities in the Legal Community and Workforce At Large
We, as attorneys, many of us working directly with clients experiencing varying levels of disabilities, are likely to know better than most people the hardship and bias faced by persons with disabilities. Yet, when it comes to their equal participation in the legal field, we, as a community, are failing. Lawyers with disabilities remain severely underrepresented in the legal community. It is time that we stop thinking of persons with disabilities as just clients, and start working to ensure they are also our colleagues, and equal colleagues at that.
The UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities identifies persons with disabilities as those who have long-term physical, mental, intellectual or sensory impairments which in interaction with various barriers may hinder their full and effective participation in society on an equal basis with others. In the United States, the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) defines a person with a disability as someone who has a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activities.
Based on the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2019 American Community Survey, there are over 20 million noninstitutionalized persons aged 18-64 with a disability in this country. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, as of November 2021, only 37.7% of Americans of working age (16-64) with disabilities participated in the workforce, compared to 76.7% of Americans without a disability. As of that same time period, the unemployment rate for persons with disabilities (8.1%) was more than twice that for those without a disability (3.8%).
As if the numbers in the general workforce aren’t bad enough. Based on their 2020-2021 Directory of Legal Employers, the National Association for Law Placement (NALP) reported that lawyers with disabilities represented just 0.88% of all lawyers in reporting offices/firms. However, this data is limited because this statistic was much less widely reported than other demographics.
In 2020, a national study of lawyers with disabilities supported by the American Bar Association (ABA) showed that 25% of responding attorneys reported having a health condition or impairment. Within that group, only 31% of respondents identified as a person with a disability; thus, only about 7.7% of the respondents on this issue identified as a person with a disability. The study further showed that non-apparent or hidden disabilities, such as mental, cognitive and some health-related disabilities, constituted a substantial portion of the reported health conditions or disabilities.
This 2020 ABA study also reported that lawyers who identify as persons with disabilities experience both indirect and overt forms of discrimination in the workplace, varying from subtle but unintentional bias to bullying and harassment. Such discrimination may manifest in work policies, inaccessible workplaces and technology, and lack of workplace accommodations, or they may manifest as attitudinal bias expressed intentionally or unintentionally via verbal and nonverbal microaggressions.
Reconsidering the Way We Think About Persons with Disabilities
In order to obtain more equality and representation for those with disabilities in the legal community, we might start by reconsidering the way we think about this issue.
For starters, we need to recognize that it is an issue. Diversity and inclusion (D&I) has improved in the workplace in recent years, but one group that is often overlooked in terms of advancing D&I is persons with disabilities. Most of us probably don’t even think of persons with disabilities when we think of diversity and inclusion. But we need to, and so we should start by including the disability community in our D&I efforts.
Second, we should look inward and consider whether we personally are harboring our own bias, implicit or explicit, toward persons with disabilities. A 2007 study found that among common social characteristics (e.g., gender, race, religion, sexuality, etc.), the preference for people without disability compared to people with disability was among the strongest implicit and explicit biases, with only age showing more implicit bias. The study reported that 76% of respondents showed an implicit preference for people with disabilities, compared to 9% for people with disabilities.
In order to improve equality and inclusion for the disability community, we have to first identify and acknowledge our own role in the current state of affairs. Because only when we come together and create a shared vision for improving the face of our legal community can we truly achieve diversity and inclusion of persons with disabilities.
Third, we should consider what it truly is to be a person with a disability. There are many lines of thought on this topic, but here are just a few:
Persons with disabilities don’t just include those who are blind or deaf or wheelchair-bound; they include persons with numerous varying impairments and conditions, many of which are hidden or non-apparent. There could already be someone in your office with such an impairment and you are unaware of it. We need to be sure to think of disability in the broadest terms in order to work toward the best version of equality and inclusion.
Many in the disability rights community reject the traditional medical view of disability as a condition to be cured or pitied. Instead, they advocate for acceptance of disability and the right of people with disabilities to be afforded an equal playing field. This advocacy is based on the idea that disability only occurs as a result of barriers erected by society. For example, a person using a wheelchair only becomes “disabled” when a physical barrier such as stairs prevents them from accessing a building. If the building had been built with a ramp, instead of stairs, there would be no disability; that person would have the equal ability to access the building as a person not in a wheelchair. Thus, we might consider that the “disabilities” faced by many people only result from structural barriers that we, as a society, have imposed on them.
Finally, disability is fluid. Many of us, particularly those in the personal injury field, don’t need to be told how precious our health is. We can be fully healthy and able-bodied one day and partially paralyzed the next. For those not in the personal injury field, we need look no further than the COVID-19 pandemic to see how vulnerable we really are to illness and disease. If we all bear in mind how fleeting health can be, it will allow us to be more empathetic and receptive to advancing the inclusion and equality of our colleagues with disabilities.
Lastly, we should consider that though persons with disabilities may live a very different experience, it is that difference that is likely to enable them to provide valuable contributions to our field. Persons with disabilities have had to develop a special set of skills to enable them to function in our society. This likely means that they have not only developed the skills necessary for basic functioning, but that they are also particularly capable of skills such as problem-solving, innovative and creative thinking, adapting and adjusting, persistence, and the creative use of technologies and other materials. All of these skills would prove valuable in any workplace, but certainly so in the legal field. It is imperative that we start to reconsider a person’s disability as much more of a positive than a negative.
The Next Steps
Once we reconsider the way we think about persons with disabilities and acknowledge the need to include them in our D&I efforts, the question becomes: what do we do next?
The answer to this question requires far more attention and detail than this article is capable of providing. Nonetheless, in an effort to get the conversation started and get us thinking about solutions, here are a few commonly recommended steps you might consider for your workplace:
Reconsider your job application process and how it might discourage or implicitly discriminate against applicants with disabilities. Think about the format of your application or posting, the accessibility of it, and your written description of the job. Do you really need to include generic job requirements or descriptions such as driving, lifting, the ability to sit for long periods, etc.? If the job does not absolutely require such work, you should seriously consider removing such descriptors from the posting.
Take steps to make persons with disabilities feel included and comfortable in their physical workspace. If anything, the COVID-19 pandemic has taught us how to be flexible with our work environment, and we have often discovered that such flexibility has little effect on productivity, sometimes even increasing it. We should continue to remain flexible about the way people undertake their work, including flexible work schedules and work locations. We should also ensure employees and coworkers have access to assistive technologies, such as hearing loss aids, screen readers, and adaptive keyboards.
Provide training and educational opportunities to enable employees and coworkers to better understand and empathize with the challenges their colleagues with disabilities face and to reduce the stigma of being disabled. Everyone should learn about the tools and accommodations that can be made available to persons with disabilities so that everyone can contribute to finding solutions and leveling the playing field.
Create an inclusive and welcoming culture in your office for persons with disabilities. Establish a zero tolerance policy for harassment and bullying. Make it known with words and actions that your office is welcoming and accommodating of persons with disabilities. Approach those with disabilities in your office with an open mind and a willingness to learn from and support them.
While these are just a few basic strategies that you might begin to implement, there is much more that can be done and learned in order to promote equality and inclusion of the disability community in the legal field. Numerous and extensive resources are available at our fingertips. Here are some suggestions to get you started:
ABA Commission on Disability Rights
ABA 2020 Study
U.S. Department of Labor Office of Disability Employment Policy
Employer Assistance and Resource Network on Disability Inclusion
Job Accommodation Network
Disability: IN
Getting to Equal: The Disability Inclusion Advantage report
Disability Rights Bar Association
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