[blindLaw] Inaccessibility of Legal Careers

Mon Nov 6 16:21:40 UTC 2023

Hi Julie,

Keep going.  It isn't always this bad.  As you spend more time integrating in with a work flow you develop strategies and workarounds that aren't as easy to develop in the short timeline of a clinic.  Starting any new job has an extended onboarding time to get efficient as a blind person learning new technology systems.  Your university reader should be 24/7 available.  That's a big drop by the school.  Aira is a reasonable solution.  

There are some areas of practice that are much more likely to involve handwriting.  If you go into worker's Comp., criminal defense, or anything involving medical records, you're much more likely to encounter handwriting.  Although less common with new medical record systems, older records from doctors are mostly hand written.  There's no getting around reliance on a human reader for some parts of legal practice.  I'd estimate it comes up about 5% of the time in the volume of documents that I need to review.  I spoke to a struggling workers comp attorney who is blind and they had to do it about 65% of the time with a need to do it live in depositions.  That's hard to manage without a lot of prep time.

For what its worth, I recently did a round of reviewing about 8,000 documents.  The e-discovery protocols are your friend.  By complying with requirements to make the documents searchable and machine readable for import/export into e-discovery software, they become very accessible for efficient review with a screen reader in either RTF or Excel formats.
I'm happy to share more thoughts.

-----Original Message-----
From: Julie A. Orozco <kaybaycar at gmail.com> 
Sent: Sunday, November 5, 2023 7:39 PM
To: Blind Law Mailing List <blindlaw at nfbnet.org>
Subject: Re: [blindLaw] Inaccessibility of Legal Careers

Hi everyone,

Thank you for your kind comments. I am going to reach out to those of you who offered this week. I was at the NFB of Virginia state convention this weekend.

I really appreciate all of your support. It's good to know that my clinic isn't a sign of things to come in my legal career. I think everyone questions if they really want to do law in law school, but this semester has made me question more than ever. So, thank you again for allowing me to share. We have some hearings coming up, and my professor seems to think I will do well in them, especially since one is over the phone. I'm not sure how I feel about this, but at least we won't have to make visual aids. :)

Julie

On 11/5/23, Teresita Rios via BlindLaw <blindlaw at nfbnet.org> wrote:
> Dear Julie,
>
> I am so sorry to hear of your struggles. I graduated last semester and 
> my clinic work was very accessible. Our clinics used an internal case 
> filing system named Cleo. it is accessible. Everything was scanned by 
> the other students and the office assistant. We did have forms for my 
> clients but they were arranged in a pile some sidewise and others 
> straight. I used the TV in a meeting room to share my screen while I 
> was navigating my copy of the forms on my computer while my client had 
> those forms in front of them. FOr litigation, I had to spend much more 
> time getting acquainted with the case file before I met with my partner and professor.
> I have ABBYFineReader on my personal computer and when a scan was not 
> accessible i ran it by ABBY. Several times other students in the 
> clinic not just my partner, or the office assistant read documents to 
> me. and I took notes before I had a meeting with my supervising 
> attorney. I was lucky in that sense that our professor was receptive 
> and heard and brainstormed small issues we faced in the office. 
> Inaccessibility is mostly due to laziness to brainstorm. and you 
> should let your professor know that at least in her semester’s report.
>
> Best wishes,
> Teresita
>
>
>
>> On Nov 1, 2023, at 1:11 PM, 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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--
Julie A. Orozco
MM Vocal Performance, 2015; American University Washington College of Law, JD Candidate 2023