[blindLaw] Accommodations For Prosecution Clinic

[Sai]

Will you be doing court presentation, or just document review, research,
prep, etc out of court?

If in court, I'd suggest you try just sitting in on a couple random
criminal cases to imagine what it would be like, what things are going on
that you're not tracking (and would need some strategy for), how you'd
structure notes etc so that you'd be able to be as good or better
(extemporaneously), how to get a mental map of the courtroom that's as good
as your map of home so you can concentrate on presentation rather than O&M,
etc.

If out of court, do that anyway, but think more about what things the
presenting attorney would need to have immediately available to hand.

Boring suggestion I know, but in my experience (not as a lawyer
representing others), a few random real life examples are often more
beneficial than a priori plans.

And if you've been accepted to the clinic, hopefully you have access to
interview the prosecutor afterwards to find out how they did something or
other, so you can then think through how you would do it with more info
than you'd get from just observing the performance. There's always more
behind the scenes.


One specific comment: visual evidence can be extremely difficult (or
impossible) to adequately describe in full. Even knowing what's relevant
may require a lot of expertise and context that a general reader cannot be
expected to have. In court someone may refer to some details that a reader
won't have thought to tell you about (or even noticed).

I don't have any suggestions for how to address that other than just
trusting your sighted experts, but I've no experience having to do that
kind of thing fully blind. Hopefully others can give better advice.

Sincerely,
Sai
President, Fiat Fiendum, Inc., a 501(c)(3)

Sent from my mobile phone; please excuse the concision, typos, and
autocorrect errors.

On Mon, 17 Jul 2023, 19:37 Lauren Bishop via BlindLaw, <blindlaw at nfbnet.org>
wrote:

> Hello All,
> I was accepted to my school’s prosecution clinic. I am planning to request
> the following accommodations: a reader to describe visual evidence and to
> assist in the courtroom with any last-minute print documents, a laptop with
> JAWS and a Braille display.  This is only a start, and I am reaching out to
> my professor to learn a little bit more about the clinic, and potentially
> anything else I would need. What are some accommodations that you guys have
> found helpful working for a state attorneys office?
> Thanks,
> Lauren
>
> Sent from my iPhone
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