[blindLaw] Vital; Discussion topic Recommendation and idea/advice for cheap/free assistants to aid visually, impaired and blind attorneys with incidental Tal and peripheral tasks that require vision

[Aser Tolentino]

Hi Omar,
It can be a good idea, and one that’s been put in practice in some offices, particularly in the public sector where internship pipelines are more robust and operate at scale. My first internship with a DA’s office was largely enabled by having a college student act as my eyes for processing things like handwritten police reports. Based on my experience, there are a few issues with this approach though that I think prevent it being a widespread solution for blind lawyers, which can be broken up into supply and demand concerns.
First, as far as demand, most of the tasks you’ve described aren’t things a lawyer should be doing anyway. Those aren’t core job functions and are properly the domain of paraprofessional staff. To the extent that law students are made to do them as part of their internships, I think it’s basically the professional equivalent of hazing and I’d challenge anyone to justify the use of a legal professional to perform such work. It’s like delivering mail with an F1 car. I’m open to the idea that there are offices out there that make attorneys do these things as part of their workflows, but I’d wager that such workplaces would be the ones least likely to engage in the collaborative dialogue to establish workable accommodations anyway given how they’re treating the rest of their staff. This segues into the supply issue.
If you are relying on students to perform this work, you will run into challenges with availability on multiple fronts. Students have academic schedules, that limit their availability during the week, and commitments like exams that are non-negotiable. So the blind attorney cannot perform what we are presupposing is essential work unless the intern happens to be there that day. And beyond that, there is the challenge that you will have to operate with the understanding that you will likely need to retrain some or all of your interns every few months. That is an opportunity cost that requires consideration as well. You might as well just allocate a few hours a week of a legal secretary’s time to assist with such tasks, rather than have them take a day or two every few months to train interns. So I think this might fall into the realm of being arguably unduly burdensome.
Others mileage may vary of course, but those are my thoughts upon reading.

> On Dec 30, 2025, at 5:23 PM, omar duncan via BlindLaw <blindlaw at nfbnet.org> wrote:
> 
> Hello, good afternoon.
> 
> I’m willing to provide a solution to an issue we face this visually
> impaired attorneys. The solution can be an economically effective way to
> help us navigate around the office in ways that are economically feasible
> and defective while also helping the assistant.  By the way, these tasks
> are usually menial diminutive  tasks that are not vital to the practice of
> law, but are still important for the day-to-day management of law
> operations and practicing law— And these tasks happen to require vision.
> 
> Such tasks include staple things together, putting together binders
> scanning copying that kind of stuff.
> 
> One way we can have a funnel of readily available labor to satisfy these
> tasks rather than having our firms or organizations bring dedicated people
> on payroll to help us with these things is offering unpaid internship
> opportunities to high schoolers for college students to help with these
> tasks. If necessary, we can even provide the minimum wage with no benefit
> benefits in a small level salary. This arrangement is mutually beneficial
> because high schoolers and college students usually have no work
> experience, and having an opportunity to work at a law office operation
> will provide in valuable experience on their résumé that will help get
> future work. A lot of of them also don’t mind getting paid minimum wage,
> which is not economically burden some for the firm that employs us in
> return, the visually impaired attorney gets help at low cost to help with
> these incidental diminutive.  ‘Menial Task tasks and (work) flows in a
> non-economically burden some way and the supply of labor is readily
> available and frequent because lots of highschoolers in college students
> want jobs to get their foot in the door and get experience. Basically, the
> student worker Benefits because they get crucial experience for the résumé
> while also getting small amounts of money that is not economically
> burdensome to the firm wall also helping the visually impaired lawyer with
> these incidental peripheral tasks, with the supply of the labor being
> readily available and frequently available because there are so many high
> school student students in college student students want jobs and can’t
> otherwise get jobs in this very competitive market.
> 
> This solution can work very well for our needs. There’s only one practical
> issue. Confidentiality. Some people might not want to give college kids or
> highschoolers access to confidential information because of the sensitivity
> of a lot Office operation; however, this issue can be remediated by
> frequent supervision by office, managerial staff, and proper vetting and
> interviewing.
> 
> Overall, I think this solution is something we should push forward. It is
> mutually beneficial for all involved – – the student who gets experience
> and gets phenomenal amount of money and the attorney in the firm who get
> productivity at low cost. It is mutually beneficial for everyone and I
> think we should seriously consider it.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I just want to send this message in the list. Serve to open up discussion
> and feel free to chime in and everyone provide their own insights thoughts.
> Please feel free to write insights on how it will work and why it may not
> work. Are there any ways that we can improve upon this? If there are
> certain things that don’t work with this arrangement, how can we get around
> that and still make it work?
> 
> Let’s open the floor for discussion?
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