[blindLaw] Inaccessibility of Legal Careers

Wed Nov 1 21:20:45 UTC 2023

 Julie,
First of all, just wow! Be kind to yourself here; you're up against an extreme level of inaccessibility that I have never experienced in my legal career, including three years of law school and about five years of practice/clerking. I haven't had to deal with handwritten documents of any kind for the vast majority of my career, and if I did, I could work with a paralegal or other support staff to get them read or typed up.Filing in many courts is less than fully accessible, but in practice, you should be able to rely on a paralegal or administrative assistant to help with this.It sounds like your professor profoundly fails to get it. Apologizing for editing on paper, and then continuing to do so, is far from good enough; all edits need to be made in a format you can access, and you should (and in practice generally will) have enough time to work through track changes, comments, etc.I suppose a lot depends on what type of work you end up doing, but as a lawyer who deals primarily with sophisticated commercial entities, I can almost always find a way to access any documents I need to work with. I still run into snags--my e-discovery platform could be better, for instance--but my colleagues are more than willing to help in areas where I might run into barriers.In sum, this too shall pass and will become a bad memory that doesn't even merit a footnote in your legal career, assuming you decide to stick with it. I wouldn't make any career-altering decisions right now. You can always pivot later, if you get into practice and decide it isn't for you. Plenty of attorneys who have never encountered discrimination or accessibility barriers have done this. And there are plenty of JD-advantage careers out there, which do not involve practicing and may not be as high-pressure.Take one day at a time; fight one battle at a time; and don't hesitate to upset some apple carts, if that's what you need to do to have a fighting chance to do well in your courses.Hang in there,James    On Wednesday, November 1, 2023 at 01:20:17 PM EDT, Julie A. Orozco via BlindLaw <blindlaw at nfbnet.org> wrote:  

 Hi everyone,

I am really struggling and wonder if some of you can provide
perspective. First, how much of your legal work, particularly for
those of you with clients, is actually accessible to you as a blind
person? I ask this because I would guess that the work in my legal
clinic is 60 or 70 percent inaccessible, and there seems to be very
little I can do about it by the end of the semester.

I am currently taking a civil advocacy clinic through my law school.
Each student works with a partner and interviews, files motions for,
and represents clients in court hearings. Ever since I started law
school, I've been blown away at the inaccessible nature of the legal
profession, especially considering my last career literally required
me to get Braille materials because music cannot be rendered in a Word
document. But this clinic is another level of inaccessibility I never
imagined.

We had to do several mailings last week. The instructions were
hand-written, and the entire process was inaccessible, so my partner
had to do it while I stood there with nothing to do to help. We
routinely have to work with scanned images that can't be converted
into text easily (if at all) because they contain hand writing. I
asked for a reader when I realized this would be a problem, but the
reader they gave me works for our disability support office and is
only available in the mornings when I am in class. He signed a
confidentiality agreement, which was a requirement for my clinic, but
he still shares what he's working on with his supervisor, who cannot
be granted access to client information. I'm attempting to work out
these issues, but while I try, the work continues.

When my professor, partner, and I edit motions and other writings,
it's a nightmare. First, I had to figure out Sharepoint, which lags
and doesn't seem to work well with Jaws. Another blind attorney gave
me some tips that really helped, but in the end, none of that mattered
because when the three of us started editing together, I was
completely lost. I was trying to listen to track changes, comments,
footnotes, and the text of the motion with Jaws while my professor and
partner were looking at printed pages and just marking off what they
wanted to change. I couldn't keep up. My professor apologized, but she
kept using the paper copies and changing things I couldn't see on my
document.

There are also lots of little things, like taking pictures, scanning
documents and checking them when documenting information, and putting
paper packets and visual aids together. Finally, when filing with the
DC Superior court, their system was not completely keyboard
accessible, so I couldn't even take the lead in filing our motion. I'm
frankly very overwhelmed. Although I know I have a lot to learn and I
accept that we live in a visual world, this level of inaccessibility
is making me question getting into the legal field at all. I
understand that sometimes I can do more to fight for accessibility,
but what am I supposed to do when I have three other classes, am
applying to take the Bar, and am also trying to apply for fellowships
and jobs? I cannot take on all these battles, and for the first time,
I don't even know which ones, if any, matter. My partner and professor
are tolerant of all these issues, but it feels awful that I have to
rely on my partner to do so much. My professor has also made it clear
that I have to improve over the course of the semester and put more
work into my clinic assignments.

I've tried to brain storm solutions. I've tried talking with my
partner about letting me figure out some of the inaccessible work.
Sometimes she gets something done while I'm still trying to figure out
how to make it accessible. Whenever I bring up these issues with my
professor, she acts like I should just expect things to be
inaccessible. "It's a visual world." And while that's true, she and
the university still have a legal obligation to make things accessible
when possible.

I'm just not sure what to do, what to ask for, and how to proceed. I'm
tired, so tired, and I'm graduating at the end of the semester, so
part of me just wants to let all this go. But when I think about a
future career being like this, I just lose all desire to practice law
anymore.

Does anyone have any thoughts? Please be kind if you think I should
just suck it up and keep fighting. I know this but would also love
some support.

Thank you,

Julie

-- 
Julie A. Orozco
MM Vocal Performance, 2015; American University Washington College of
Law, JD Candidate 2023

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