by Barry E. Katz

When Nancy Smith took the LSAT, she didn't do very well-certainly not well enough to get into law school. So she took it again, and the results were just as dismal. Over several years, she tried a third time and a fourth time with no improvement. Finally, she went to a private tutor, who suggested she be tested for a learning disability.

After about $1,000 worth of IQ, reading, and comprehension tests and other evaluations, a psychiatrist concluded Smith has a language learning disability. Her brain processes information slower than the average person does, especially when she's reading. The doctor recommended to LSAT administrators that Smith be given time and a half in a quiet room away from the other test-takers to take the admissions exam. They agreed.

After Smith took the test a fifth time with the special accommodations, her percentile doubled. She applied to 10 schools, and six offered her a spot. She chose American University, which, when presented with the psychiatrist's documentation, also agreed to the same accommodations for exams.

Her classmates haven't always been understanding.

"I've had snide comments from other students," Smith says. She tells how they'll ask about her absences on exam days, saying, "What's the deal?"

"I don't have a problem with it…. I just [say] I get accommodations because I have a learning disability," Smith says. "I remember a couple of them asking me what that means. And they're like, 'Yeah, well, I'd do better, too, if I got time and a half in a quiet room.' It's just like they don't get it. And that's fine, that's their problem."

Such efforts at accommodation are intended to level the playing field, to give each student an equal chance-not an advantage-of succeeding in law school. Under the federal Americans with Disabilities Act, as well as a number of state laws, schools are required to make reasonable accommodations for students with disabilities. Under the 1990 law, a disability means any physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activities, such as seeing, hearing, speaking, walking, working, learning, breathing, performing manual tasks, and caring for oneself.

Despite the effort to legislate equality, law students with disabilities are, on average, less likely to get jobs in private practice than the rest of their class, according to the National Association for Law Placement (NALP).

About 68 percent of 427 disabled graduates surveyed from the class of 2000 had found full- or part-time legal jobs nine months after graduation, compared with about 80 percent for the class as a whole. Disabled law grads, however, are more likely to find government and public interest positions than their classmates are. Part of the reason may be that some disabled graduates say they want to avoid working the long hours typically expected of new lawyers at large private firms. Or they may feel that government agencies are more likely to grant accommodations like flexible schedules. Nearly 21 percent of disabled graduates in the class of 2000 found jobs in the public or public interest sector, compared with 16 percent for the class as a whole, according to NALP.

That may be one reason lawyers with disabilities earn, on average, less than nondisabled lawyers. The average starting salary for all graduates from the class of 2000 was $67,786. Disabled graduates made, on average, $7,228 less-nearly an 11 percent difference.

Despite the discrepancies, many disabled law students are especially driven to succeed in school, often because they must overcome physical or mental obstacles.

Kareen Zeitounzian, 25, a 3L at the State University of New York at Buffalo, has had spinal muscular atrophy, a form of muscular dystrophy, since birth. Unable to walk but able to use her arms, she gets around school in an electric wheelchair.

"I have a lowered immunity, so I have to be very careful as far as not wearing myself out and getting sick," says Zeitounzian, who hopes to practice family, health, or disability law after she graduates. "I have had several bouts in law school where I missed several weeks of school. I have respiratory complications because of my disability, so I can get ill very quickly.… I have note-takers in all my classes to keep up because I do write, but I write much slower than the average person, and I get fatigued faster."

Zeitounzian is concerned about how well she'll be able to do the job she hopes to eventually hold after law school. She's especially worried about time demands; she knows she realistically couldn't work the 80 hours a week that some first-year associates take on. In her job search, she has avoided the large firms.

Before the Americans with Disabilities Act, many law firms wouldn't even consider hiring a lawyer with a disability, says Michael Flippin, 46, a Claremont, Calif., attorney who has been a quadriplegic since breaking his neck in a trampoline accident at age 20.

"I did my job search … prior to the ADA becoming effective," says Flippin, who specializes, in part, in disability law. "I would go to law firms, and they'd tell me point blank, 'We didn't know you had a disability when we set up this interview. Thank you very much for showing up, but we don't want someone with a disability because there are partners here who don't want the insurance risk, and we don't know how you're going to go to a deposition, and we're just not willing to risk hiring somebody with a disability.' I was told that point blank by senior partners of local law firms.

"I would love for somebody to come to me as an attorney and tell me that somebody said that today, because I'd have a good lawsuit. So, have employers learned their lesson? I think a lot of them have, but people still come into my office and tell me horror stories about what people say. So there's still education that needs to be done."

These days, law firms tend to be more welcoming, says Madeline Cohen, 31, a research and writing attorney with the Federal Public Defender's Office in Denver and a member of the American Bar Association's Commission on Mental and Physical Disability Law.

"Assuming that you're otherwise qualified, I don't think [a disability] is an impediment in the interviewing process," says Cohen, who has a degenerative retinal disease and a related hearing impairment. "At least I certainly have had no experiences whatsoever where my disabilities seemed to cause any potential employer to treat me differently."

Kathi Pugh, pro bono services manager for Morrison and Foerster in San Francisco and secretary of the ABA's Section of Individual Rights and Responsibilities, says advances in technology have made it easier for disabled lawyers to do their jobs nearly as efficiently as anyone else. Lawyers who aren't able to type can use voice-recognition software that turns speech into words on a computer screen. Real-time transcription services help lawyers with hearing impairments follow court proceedings and depositions. Lawyers who are blind can have documents and pages from law books scanned into Braille. Online legal research sites have eliminated much of the need to retrieve heavy books from the library.

"I really don't think it's a matter of time much anymore," says Pugh, a quadriplegic. "We've come such a long way with different technological advances that I don't think it's so much an issue."

Cohen says it's important for new lawyers with disabilities to ask their employers for whatever accommodations they need to make their workdays as smooth as possible.

"I think most employers want to accommodate people with disabilities within reason," she says. "They're interested in assistive technology. They're interested in what they can do to make this person they hired function effectively.

"But part of that is students with disabilities need to have the confidence in their lawyering abilities and the confidence to say, 'My disability does not affect my ability to be a lawyer. It's part of who I am, but it doesn't make me less qualified than anyone else.'"

That confidence is developed, in part, in law school, where the stress and competition can be intense. And most schools do whatever is reasonably necessary to give disabled students an equal chance of success.

About 30 of the roughly 400 students at the University of San Francisco School of Law are eligible for accommodations because of disabilities, says Nichole Bohn, USF's coordinator of disability services. About half have learning disabilities or attention deficit disorder (ADD). In recent years, university officials have seen an increase in students with chronic health disabilities and job-related repetitive stress injuries, mostly in older students who came to law school because they lost their jobs or chose to change careers, Bohn says.

"Nothing is expected of the student in terms of paying for [accommodations]," she says. "We do often have a student who thinks, 'Maybe I shouldn't ask for accommodations because it's expensive.'"

What's a reasonable accommodation under the ADA is determined on a case-by-case basis. USF looks for comprehensive documentation, although it usually requires less documentation for outwardly apparent physical disabilities and relatively more for less apparent problems, like ADD or learning disabilities, Bohn says. Documentation for learning disabilities will be accepted from anyone qualified to do psycho-educational evaluations, often a Ph.D. or psychiatrist.

"Anytime you are working with a large number of students, you are going to have a small percentage who are going to try to take advantage of the system," Bohn says. "I think that's why we are being very particular. We want to give people what they're entitled to but not more than that, so that everyone is on a level playing field."

Most law students with ADD or learning disabilities don't disclose their disabilities to professors or classmates. It's the policy of most law schools to preserve that anonymity. Typically, accommodations for those disabilities are given at exam time; students needing extra time or a quiet room take their tests away from everyone else.

"In terms of final exams, all of them are identified by exam number, and they are blind-graded by the professor, so the professor does not know that there's any difference between the length of time that a student took an exam or what method they took it," says Chris Matheny, assistant dean for student services at Chicago-Kent College of Law.

Peter O'Hara, 30, has been hearing impaired since birth. He can hear a little but must rely on lip reading in conversations. A 3L at SUNY-Buffalo's law school, O'Hara already has a job lined up at a Buffalo firm, where he hopes to specialize in employee benefits law. In the meantime, he gets by in class with the help of a captioning service.

"A court reporter comes to class with me, and she types everything that's said in the classroom," O'Hara says. "The text comes up on a laptop, so I can [understand] in real time what's being said in the classroom. Sort of like captioning you see on TV….

"I'm only a few seconds behind … so I'm able to follow very closely what's being said then and there. I'm able to argue along with the other students. Most of the time in that situation, I look directly at the person speaking and only rely on my captioning services if I misunderstand something."

Similar captioning services often are available in the courtroom, not just for people with disabilities, but for all lawyers.

"It's a direct feed from the court reporter's computer to a monitor or laptop computer," says Cohen, the federal public defender, of the equipment at the U.S. District Court in Denver. "Lots and lots of lawyers who are not disabled use it. It's terrific for organizing yourself in a deposition and tracking testimony. It's wonderful software, but for lawyers with hearing disabilities, it's a godsend."

Zeitounzian understands that people with spinal muscular atrophy, like herself, tend to die sooner than most everyone else. People with the disease usually have some muscle loss as they get older, but she believes as long as she remains active, she'll be able to perform the functions of law student and attorney.

"I don't know if I'm in denial or what, but I think I'll be able to maintain the strength that I have," she says. "Sure there are times when I feel like I'm too dependent on others. But for the most part I have a positive outlook, and I feel that everyone has their obstacles or challenges, and this is just one challenge that I have.

"I think it helps in that I have this kind of idealistic view that I want to give back to society what I've been given to help me succeed so much. I'm hoping to help others in my position, to make it a little easier for them to lead a life that's independent so that maybe they also can pursue careers."

Law school and the uncertainty of the job market beyond can be a hand-wringing experience for any law student. But for law students with disabilities, the anxiety can be especially acute.

That's why the American Bar Association's Commission on Mental and Physical Disability Law, through its subcommittee on lawyers with disabilities, has started a mentoring program. The initiative pairs disabled law students with practicing attorneys with disabilities-often the same disabilities the students have. The mentors offer academic advice, career tips, and general support, says Cathleen West, an ABA staff attorney who coordinates the program. It's also an opportunity for students to develop contacts in the legal community.

The program started last year in the Washington, D.C., area with four law students with hearing, visual, or learning disabilities from George Washington and Georgetown universities. The Catholic University of America School of Law recently joined the Washington mentoring program, and a similar initiative is gearing up in Denver.

The ABA contacts law schools, which ask disabled students if they're interested in participating. A student need not reveal his or her identity to the ABA; the school merely serves as a liaison to the program, West says.

Students with disabilities are reluctant to seek special accommodations to help them get by in school, says Madeline Cohen, a member of the ABA Commission on Mental and Physical Disability Law who is coordinating the Denver program. A mentor could urge a student to get the assistance he or she needs.

"I think it's important for students to know that they can and should seek whatever accommodations may help them survive law school," says Cohen, a research and writing attorney with the Federal Public Defender's Office in Denver.

Cohen says the University of Colorado and the University of Denver law schools have expressed interest in participating in the mentoring program.

"Once the mentoring relationships are under way, they're fairly individualized," Cohen says. "We'd like the lawyers to take some initiative with establishing contact with the students, and the students also need to take some initiative to contact their mentors, and then it's really going to be up to the individual mentoring relationships to decide what each of them needs and how often they want to meet."

Mentors can help law students deal with obstacles in their academic and legal careers. But more work needs to be done to address issues of significance to students and lawyers with disabilities, Cohen says.

"Courtrooms are really difficult to navigate if you have a vision or hearing disability," says Cohen, who has a vision and hearing impairment. "The legal profession as a whole is so focused on interaction. That can be difficult for people with all different kinds of disabilities. So one of the issues we face is figuring out what the biggest problems are for lawyers with disabilities. I think we're still identifying those issues and then looking at all the different ways, including technology, that we can improve that."

For further information on the mentoring program, contact Cathleen West at 202-662-1573 or Madeline Cohen at 303-294-7002.