ABA commission promotes hiring, retention of lawyers with disabilities

"Discipline is learned in the school of adversity," said Judge Richard Brown of the Wisconsin State Court of Appeals, quoting Mahatma Gandhi, at the recent National Conference on the Employment of Lawyers with Disabilities held in Washington, D.C. Brown joined James Scarboro of Arnold and Porter, EEOC Commissioner Christine Griffin and moderator Marguerite D. Downing, deputy public defender for Los Angeles, at a session addressing the question, "Does it Pay to Hire Lawyers with Disabilities?"

Through that school of adversity, Brown said, people with disabilities adapt and learn quickly, which is exactly what law firms want from employees. Traits of a competent lawyer, he went on, include being a problem solver, being skilled in task and management organization, being able to communicate well, having an interest in others, wanting to promote justice and being a hard worker. Skills that lawyers with disabilities often have due to compensating for their disability translate well in the practice of law, he said.

For better or worse, said Scarboro, other lawyers "would die for the attention that lawyers with disabilities receive." Juries and witnesses in a courtroom setting are interested in how a lawyer with a disability is going to navigate the courtroom and how they're going to handle paper, said Scarboro. As a lawyer with a disability, he continued, you need to "use that attention to make the better argument." But the lawyer needs to get the listener beyond the disability.

For Griffin, it wasn't about getting a jury beyond her disability, but about getting a prospective employer beyond it. Griffin, who uses a wheelchair, explained that in one interview she was asked not about her law school credentials or previous work experience, but rather, "How would you get a book off the shelf?"

The number of lawyers with disabilities working in the government is actually decreasing, Griffin said, but companies such as Wal-Mart are looking for lawyers who can relate to the firm's clients and who are like them, and this would include hiring lawyers with disabilities.

Griffin began her comments by affirming that a disability is another dimension of one's character. We take for granted now, said Griffin, that diversity in gender and race is a plus. "Logic dictates that [employing] lawyers with disabilities" is another aspect of diversity.

To take the next step in diversity, Griffin suggests, stop "ruminating" about the problems of diversifying. Instead, "just hire us."

At the conference, the EEOC released a fact sheet, "Reasonable Accommodations for Attorneys With Disabilities," that addresses the rights and responsibilities of both legal employers and lawyers with disabilities, and reviews some of the most common types of reasonable accommodations that lawyers with disabilities may need.

The National Conference on the Employment of Lawyers with Disabilities was cosponsored by the ABA Commission on Mental and Physical Disability Law, the ABA Office of the President and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

Back to top