This is being provided in a rough-draft format. Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings.
RONZA OTHMAN: Good morning. Is this better? Okay. Good morning, everybody. My name is Ronza Othman. Welcome back to the second day of the tenBroek Disability Law Symposium. I'm going to be the moderator for the first session, “Disability Law Pipeline in A Changing Legal and Policy Landscape.” I use she/her pronouns. I am a medium height woman. I am not a responsible adult and I am blind for those of you that were at the luncheon yesterday. I am brown. And I wear a religious head covering, or some religious head covering. I'm wearing a red top with gold zippers and on a black blazer. As I said, a black head covering and black face mask which I will pull down so people can hear me better.
I serve as the president of the National Association of Blind Lawyers. The National Association of Blind government Employees and the National Federation of the Blind of Maryland. My paid job involves managing EEO and civil rights program for centers and Medicare and Medicaid services. Our work impacts roughly 100 million beneficiaries and consumers, and thousands of employees who administer Medicare, Medicaid, the children's health program, the marketplace exchanges, also known as Obamacare, we have oversight over hospitals, long term care facilities, providers and insurers throughout the United States. And of course there are a myriad of civil rights issues that may arise in all those areas.
I'm a first generation Muslim Palestinian American blind woman for whom English is a second language in post 9/11 America. So civil rights law, including disability rights law, is my passion. And so one of my things the think about often is how do we make sure that our profession attracts brilliant minds whose lived experiences inform how they will practice law in the future. Our lived experiences, our diversity of characteristics and thought, makes this profession dynamic and incredibly powerful. Our profession is at the forefront of societal change. Our legal advocacy, our drive to change policy and cultivate precedent, is the spear that is behind institutional and systemic change. Lawyers are the architects of how society operates and we define the rules how people play, work and live together.
In many ways I believe that lawyers do and will continue to build our world, and it will only be as strong, safe, and equitable as the advocates who work in the legal profession make sure it is. So it is critical to attract diverse, thoughtful, dynamic law students who have a diversity of backgrounds and thought, who will continue to build the profession and in doing so the world. This morning we have a panel that will discuss the pipeline to legal profession and share how we will do this, how we are doing this. These are some pretty amazing folks. I will tell you the order that they're going to speak in a moment, but the introductions are a little different. Katherine Perez is the inaugural director of the Coelho for disability law policy and innovation. She's also the disability rights law at Loyola university of law.
She heard her JD from the UCLA college of law and is a doctoral candidate from the university of Illinois Chicago. I'm originally from Chicago so I'm super excited. She's writing her dissertation on the Berger supreme court cases on the criminal legal system and mental disability. She's published and presented on immigration law and policy. She's worked for a congress woman and led a coalition for Latinx with disabilities and given of herself in numerous other ways to advance civil rights, disability, and intersectionality. Her lived experience has informed her disability justice as she grew up with psychiatric disabilities. As a queer disabled woman of color and granddaughter of Mexican immigrants, her lived experience of intersectionalities informs everything she does, particularly intersectional justice.
Angelica Vega is a recent graduate, May 2020 of American University in Washington, DC, where she earned departmental honors in philosophy and Latin honors as well. She served as a 2021 22 advocate at the Coelho Center for law policy innovation at Loyola Law School. She has continued to work on inclusion, equity and access that she proposed and cocreated. Nira Nova attends Florida International University majoring in criminal justice. She's an active member of fostering panther pride an organization that enhances student transition at her college. Her fostering youth and students facing homelessness. She struggled facing challenging of a Colombian American who spoke Spanish. Her personal life experiences and work as a writing tutor inspired her to volunteer teaching English as a second language. As an ELL learner herself, she strongly believes in the power of education and language. She's participated in undergraduate law programs like law path after college and the Miami Summer Legal academy.
She felt inspired by landmark cases promoting equality and civil rights such as the Olmstead case. As a woman with the psychiatric disability it gives her a unique perspective on Olmstead. As you know Olmstead was a case about where the supreme court mandated community based services for two women with intellectual and psychiatric disabilities who were institutionalized. Angela Winfield is vice president and chief diversity officer for the Law School Admission Council. In this role she provides leadership, vision, energy, and a unified philosophy to LSAC's diversity, equity and inclusion efforts on behalf of law schools and students who seek a career in law. LSAC is not what it was when I was trying to go to law school. We like them a lot better now. Prior to her current position she was associate vice president for inclusion in workforce diversity at Cornell university where she led federal contractor compliance programs, managed the affinity colleague based groups, and provided training opportunities for the 7,000 member staff.
She oversaw religious accommodations and served on the university's ADA coordination team. She is a member of the practicing law institute's advisory when on diversity and serves on numerous organizations. She earned her JD from Cornell law school and was admitted to the New York Bar. She earned her BA from Barnard College of Columbia University. And the final introduction but certainly last but not least. Robert Dinerstein is professor of law and director and founder of Disability Rights clinic at American University Washington College of Law. I will tell you I still fan girl every time I meet him.
[ Laughter ]
Prior to coming to his current job, he was an attorney for five years at the Department of Justice Civil Rights Division special litigation section where among other things he litigated cases concerning conditions of state institutions for people with intellectual disabilities, psycho social disabilities and juveniles from 1994 to 2000, he was a member of the president's committee on people with intellectual disabilities. He currently chairs the ABA commission on disability rights. He's also co-chair of the ABA section of civil rights and social justice's disability rights committee. He served on a number of board of directors and committees that address legal issues for people with disabilities, including serving on a steering committee for this Jacobus tenBroek Law Symposium from 2006 before it began, to 2017.
He is currently chair of the board of the equal rights center in Washington, DC among other organizations. His work has focused in the disability rights arena on issues of consent, supportive decision making and deinstitutionalization of people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. He has a BA from Cornell University and a JD from Yale law school. Can you see now why I fan girl? And so Angela is going to speak first. Followed by Professor Dinerstein. And then we will see who's next.
ANGELA WINFIELD: All right. So good morning, everyone. I'm Angela Winfield. I'm delighted to be here with you. My pronouns are she/her/hers. I'm about five seven, an African American woman, long black hair, wearing a dark blue, no, green, dark forest green dress. And I am totally blind. So you heard from the introduction, which was a lovely setup for this panel, that being an attorney is an extremely important role in our society in creating more social justice and access in civil rights. I'm going to give you background how I got into this work, why I do the it and then get into the context. A lot of times when people think about the LSAC they're thinking about LSAT and we'll tell you more about that and how they are working with The Coelho Center as well as the commission on Disability Rights to advance disability access for attorneys in the profession and strengthening that pipeline.
For me I started out as a practicing attorney. I went through law school, I went through LSAC. I knew them as having the test, the LSAT, needing to get accommodations from them and going through law school, taking the bar, and then becoming a commercial litigator, which I did for several years at a large firm. While I was there, I had a wonderful experience. However, it was not it was pretty apparent that there was a lack of diversity. There was a lack of people that reflected the true population of our society practicing, not only at my firm, but in any firm and across the industry. And I wanted to change that. So I shifted and took myself off the partner track and got on to the diversity track. And being on the diversity track, and having intersectional identities, having studied it and learned about it, when I got into diversity, there was something that many of you probably notice. Disability isn't often talked about. There has now been a shift in my work with diversity.
One of the things I did was create a campaign: Diversity includes disability. It is an important part and needs to be celebrated, appreciated, promoted, and the pipeline needs to be nurtured for folks who identify as disabled. So that is where my background comes from. That's how I approach this work. I joined LSAC, I believe it will be two years come this May as their vice president and chief diversity officer. As you heard from the intro we weren't always popular with folks with disabilities, but a lot has changed. And I want to share some of those changes with you. We obviously have recalled how we think about, how we incorporate disability into diversity. And this is an important shift of incorporating it. Because diversity is really at the core of LSAC. And that comes to many people as a surprise. And actually when I was looking at this position, it was a surprise to me. I was like okay, how is this going to work? You're looking for a chief diversity officer, but many people see this organization as a barrier.
And I went back through the history, the vision, the mission and it's actually embedded in creating access and justice. So we brought that back. We really leaned into how can we be that entry point. Because most people coming into law school, actually 98% of them, touch LSAC and come through our doors in some shape or form, whether it be through the test or through their applications. So how can we not only open the door, but support and encourage students all the way through practice. So prelaw through practice. And that's our mission. So we hauled our policy and our practices. In addition to that we want to build more inclusion. So one of the things we're starting to do is look at our data. Data is really, really powerful. Understanding what the need is, what the experience is. What is the diverse lived experiences of prelaw students and law applicants and aspiring students with disabilities. What are they doing, what are they thinking, what are they feeling, what are they needing? What program supports resources, information do we need to put in place. And LSAC besides having the test, has a tremendous amount of data and information.
It may not surprise you that disability is one of the things that often does not get asked about. And when we looked at the statistics on folks who identify as people of color, LGBTQ+ we have much stronger data on where they are, not only in the greater population and the prelaw pipeline, but in the legal industry. We can follow that through. We are going to, and we are starting to build that out for disability as well. So let me give you some context. In the latest NALP survey of attorneys in large law firms, it's not even looking at the entire population. It's looking at large law firms from the associates and partners. It was about 1/3 of 1% that identified as having a disability. We know that is those who choose to self identify, and disclose that for data purposes. So there's probably many, many more who are practicing. But that's the data that we're working with and we're building that back. So what we did this year, in December, was our annual matriculation survey.
This is a survey that goes out to individuals who applied to law school, got into law school, and then LSA certifies that they're actually attending. That's the work that we do. And with the students that actually are matriculating, we send them a survey to what the experience was up until that point. Up until December we never asked about disability. We added a series of questions, not only to identify whether or not they identify as being disabled, but also whether or not they disclosed on their application why they chose to disclose or not disclose. And what other supports would be helpful for them. We have some preliminary information about that, and we had more than 3,000 matriculants apply to our survey, and out of that, 11.7% identified as having a disability. And of that 11.7%, 40% chose not to disclose. When indicates, obviously this is not a surprise to anyone in the room, there's still stigma. The top two reasons for not disclosing was that they were afraid it would disadvantage their application and they did not want to be judged.
So we have some early data. We're going to dive deeper into that. We're going to look intersectionally into that if we can. The important thing is we're not going to sit with that data and say isn't that an interesting data point. We actually partnered with The Coelho Center and the ABA Commission on Disability Rights. We partnered with them and did focus groups to identify the practice questions to ask, how to ask them. And then we'll be going back and continuing to partner to build out resources for schools, and also for us to use so that the number of individuals who disclose is higher. And also we want to see that the folks who choose not to aren't doing it because they think they're going to be disadvantaged. We want to put the supports in place. We also want to work with our member law schools. LSAC is a member organization and the accredited ABA law schools, as well as the accredited schools in Canada, are member organizations.
So we work with them, we provide workshops and training to them, and we want to give them resources so that they can be more disability inclusive. It's a really important part of the pipeline, and that is the work that we're starting to do. So that's the context for this, and we're doing so much more and want to build out additional pipeline programs. But I will go ahead and turn it over. And I think we'll have time for questions.
RONZA OTHMAN: We are shifting the order a little bit so apologies for that. Next up we have Katherine Perez who is the executive director for The Coelho Center for disability law, policy and innovation. Are you ready?
KATHERINE PEREZ: Hi, everyone. Good morning. I'm Katherine Perez. I am a light skinned Latina woman with long light brown hair and I'm wearing glasses and I'm wearing a black turtle neck today. A beautiful rainy day. Okay. So Angela, I was so excited to hear those statistics. Those aren't available to the public yet?
ANGELA WINFIELD: No.
KATHERINE PEREZ: That was an awesome sneak peek because I also put the National Association of Law Placements 2017 survey which I think Angela is pulling from. We also have the ABA commission. I think they were formally called ABA commission on mental and disability law. They have a report that says 2.7 law students with disabilities and 7% students with disabilities. And this was based on a save a they sent out to ABA members. And it was between 1% and 2% of law students with disabilities and .54% of attorneys with disabilities and this was based on 75,000 lawyers at nearly 740 firms. And also the ABA 2011 report showed that 2.7% asked for accommodations in 2009 whereas in 2010 you see a jump to 3.2%. And I think Angela started us in the conversation, I'm sure you can all assume, that these numbers are probably grossly underrepresented for a number of issues. One is self disclosure, stigma. So it's important to us too that we get accurate statistics. So I'm very excited that SAC is leading the way on it.
I also have a slide up here with more statistics. Angela also talked about how we have better statistics on racial breakdown composition, as well as gender. So you can see the attorney stats on the right and the law student stats and I'll just read through them for access. So on the left we have the attorney stats are 62% male, 38% female in our profession. And 81% white, 6% Hispanic, and then next to Hispanic it says 18.9%, so that's the overall population in the U.S. So a little bit of a disparity there. 6% of us are attorneys, whereas 18.9% of us are in the population. 5% African American, whereas 13.6% are in the population. 5% Asian. 3% multiracial. It didn't even register this. I took this from the ABA national lawyer population survey in 2022. So it just said 0% Hawaiian/Pacific Islander. I'm sure there were a few but it didn't register. And 0% Native American and I compare that to the 7% of disability where there's 26% in the population according to that CDC statistic, the one in four that we got. One in four adults have a disability.
And on the law student stats, this looks a little more hopeful. Future generations, law students in 2022. We are 55.3% women. 44.5% men and .003 nonbinary so we're seeing a little better presentation in terms of gender. We have 61.6% white, 13.2% Hispanic, 7.7% Black, 6.7% Asian, 6.2% unknown, 3.9% multiracial, .5% Native American, and .2% native Hawaiian and the overall population is .3. And as we saw, we're excited for LSACs, 2.7% law students with disabilities as opposed to a 26% number. So we have some work to do in our profession, right? So I looked at the ABA has a list of pipeline programs. And as you may know, these pipeline programs typically support underrepresented communities to get them into law school, to be successful in law school and to go out to their careers. And the list included 110 programs. They break them up by types as well, they're pretty much all pipeline programs.
Academic support and mentoring, bar exam preparation, clerkship information, exposure to the law, fellowship, internships and scholarships, law school and career information, LSAT preparation, mock trial, outreach activities, pipeline programs, pro bono, professional developmental training programs, resources and student conferences and classes. And I did a really quick control finds. I typed in “disab” to cover disabled and disability and it only covered one program that said we represent underrepresented groups and put the list of underrepresented groups and there was disability so that was exciting at least. But in those other 110 programs, disability was not mentioned. And for all total 110 programs, disability was not the focus. By disability, I mean students with disability. Getting students with disability into the law school pipeline.
So now I get to boast. The Coelho Center at Loyola Law School where I'm the director, we created the Coelho law fellowship. It was the first project that I wanted to do as director. It was something that Tony Coelho was founder was passionate, it's one of the reasons I applied for this job because he was passionate about it. They wanted someone to work on this issue so I was happy to get the job. Among the many things we do at The Coelho Center, we started the fellowship. And the purpose is to increase representation of people with disabilities in the legal profession. Our program elements include, and this has grown every year. We are in our fourth cohort now. Every year we add another element. Currently we have a 2 week disability rights course. I teach Disability Rights at Loyola Law School. We get the case book and do case book method. We simulate classes in a Socratic method type of way. We have a conference. The conference the two week disability rights course is virtual, the conference we bring books in Loyola Law School. We have a year long academic course. The first Saturday of every month, my fellows have a 3 hour webinar where we have guest speakers and we continue on with readings and discussion and that kind of thing.
And the topics range from bringing admissions folks in to talk about the admission process, to having attorneys come in and talk about the profession. I know I'm going over on time. I want to get to Q&A. So I'll just read this quickly. We have academic career planning and support. That typically is me. I love meeting individually with my fellows and supporting them, writing lots of letters of recommendation. Advising them we have a disability advocacy project. Students can choose one of three options. They either write a 10 page research paper, they write a 10 page legal memo with organization, typically a disability rights organization. Or they can put together a panel. So they're sick of writing, because these are college students with disabilities. And they don't want to do any more writing, they can pull together a panel on a disability rights topic. We have a book club, we just finished this current class reading Fred Palka's What We Have Done which is a beautiful history of the Disability Rights movements, and we're going to be reading Good Kings Bad Kings.
We have publication opportunities students are not required but they'll send submissions to put up their writing on Coelho Center blog and each student gets a stipend. On our left a visual description, this is a screen shot of one of our webinars from the last class. It's really tiny but you can see there's 20 something fellows here, including myself. I'm highlighted in the top left. All smiling at the camera. And Angelica who you'll hear from are captured in this webinar. This is last year's class. Where we are and where we're going. Like I said we had four cohorts we started off with 15 fellows, our current group is 28 fellows which is exciting. So in total with our alumni and participants we have over 80 students who have come through our program. And I didn't define who we accepted in the program. So it's college students with disabilities, or recent graduates who are interested in a legal education. And we take folks from freshman year to senior year to a couple of years out of school, to even we've had a couple of folks for whom they've been in over a decade in their profession and this is a career change.
And we take folks who have an interest. They don't have to be committed to a law school. You might hear my statistic that I've counted at least 12 people from our program who have gone into law school. And I know many more are still sophomore, juniors, seniors in college and this is planning to go. This is a low out of 80 students we have 12 who have gone. Some folks have decided not to go to law school and pursue other careers as well. One of the parts of our program that is unique, it's not only training and providing resources for our students to get to law school, but I think it's also community building and a leadership program. Because I'm very up front. All the students know that law school can be a very inaccessible place for students with disabilities. So we talk very candidly about how, if and when they go to law school, that they likely will be leaders and breaking barriers at the very least, self advocates to get through inaccessible system. So I love that, and Angela and Nira can talk more about how we build community and how we become coconspirators and how we're going to change legal education.
So we have fellows from across over 20 states, now four countries, we're international. One minute, okay. That's it. Where we're going, we're going to continue our international expansion. We're going to increase our alumni program. We have an ambassador program. We're going to create our ambassador program so our alumni can help recruit at colleges across the U.S. We have the DOERS program, internships, data collection, and I put what else because I would love to hear from you as to what else we need. Angelica?
ANGELICA VEGA: Good morning everybody. My name is Angelica Vega, she/her/hers. I am a Afro Latina. I'm wearing a bow, box braids and I'm wearing a pink dress and white and pink jacket. Just think about Barbie.
[ Laughter ]
I'm super excited to be here today to talk about my experience as a Coelho fellow and how it got started is that one of my good friends recommend me to the fellowship program. Because I raised an interest in studying law at one point in our conversation. Initially I was hesitant to apply because in LA for a week and at the time I was just starting out my corporate job and I was conservative in using my vacation days. But due to the pandemic, the program was all remote. And since the center was based in California, it felt like going to class. To be honest, I never really engaged with the law like this before. Academically speaking. But I found this experience extremely insightful as a simulation of what a law class could look like. We will practice the Socratic method, cases Olmstead and understanding how to analyze opinions.
The best part of the class was interacting with my fellow fellows. I remember a particular case going around and sharing with each other in a very inclusive and intimate way. To have an opportunity to connect with the history is truly amazing and comfortable feeling. After the first portion of the program, we embark on a year long course. We looked into prominent attorneys, legal professions and college the legal field one of my most favorite webinars for me was listening to Matt who was part of the class about his law school experience. I met with him afterwards for more questions about law school. It made me realize the big appeal of this fellowship program was the mentorship among the fellowship classes and I'm super grateful that Matt took the time to help me on my own journey. I have so much to say about this fellowship program. If you let me I will go on for hours. I won't. But one thing I want to highlight today is that while the fellowship is designed to train and mentor college students with disabilities with a path towards law school, it's also building students up to foster leadership capabilities in order to advance ourselves and others.
Something that happened that we are the biggest experts of our own experience. And I've taken that phrase to heart every day. When the Supreme Court make their opinion on the Dobbs case we are beginning to lose rights we've had for half a century and there's potential harm to reproductive care. I wrote a post on The Coelho Center blog entitled Roe v. Wade reproductive rights are disability rights. They took note and invited me to the White House to speak about the experience and offered some policy recommendation. The Coelho Center was there every single step of the way. Despite being a year out of the program, The Coelho Center has been a constant positive presence in my leadership. I'm currently the chair of the DEIA advisory committee. The committee was created to uphold the center mission and guidance principle, nothing about us without us. Intersectionality in leadership by disabled people of color. The committee is based on having a unified identity of disability we all share the same lived experience. We have designed the space to make sure that everybody, especially can feel included and welcome here.
This upcoming summer will officially mark the one year of this anniversary of this committee and we remained as determined as ever to uphold its core value. Apply for a community support program, and representatives in any way. More work is definitely on the way. One initiative we're planning to do is write a statement with The Coelho Center on students for fair mission. It's expected to begin somewhere either spring or summer, topics of race and affirmative action far beyond what we can predict. University and workplaces making preparations for potential work case scenarios. At The Coelho Center a strong belief in creating a strong conclusive pipeline with disability who go on to serve as attorneys, judges, public policy professional and public service. It goes without saying then that this really has the potential to create a multitude between access to education and resources for development. The Coelho Center has refined our ability to utilize both our voices and our story and in the pursuit of having a meaningful impact in our communities.
And it's now more than ever up to youth to bring about the change we wish to see. Once again thank you so much Katherine to give the opportunity to sing the praises of The Coelho Center. I'm deeply grateful for the encouragement and positivity in my life. I'm currently in the process of preparing to take the LSAT or waiting for the ABA proposal, whichever comes first. I'm excited to pursue law school because I'll be the first person in my family to attend law school, which is very sentimental because my mom was the first person in her family to attend school at all. So I'm really grateful on this potential feature. I've probably already taken too much time so I'll pass it to my wonderful friend and also my fellow fellow Nira, who is also a superstar at the advisory committee.
[ Applause ]
NIRA NOVA: Thank you so much, Angelica for the shout out. That was amazing. So I would like to introduce myself. My name is Nira Nova. I am a recent Coelho fellow graduate currently on the board for diversity equity inclusion and advisory committee at The Coelho Center Fellowship Program. I recently graduated from Florida International University in Miami, and I'm currently in my journey for a study for the LSAT. Prior to actually starting that journey when I was diagnosed with my disability, it was a really challenging, scary, uncertain time. And I'm really glad that I had the opportunity to engage with The Coelho Center Fellowship just because I was able to engage in such a meaningful interaction with the other fellows, with the professor who encouraged me to learn more about myself and pursue this career. And as a person with a disability and having that experience, I can say for sure I felt uncertain at times if I wanted to pursue that through, and I can also attest to what Angela was saying about law students with disabilities and not being shared to disclose. I always felt that pressure and uncertainty, because I also did not want to feel like I was being judged. But The Coelho Center allowed me to understand my disability in a different way and appreciate it. And also accept it to be as part of my identity.
So moving forward, a little about my LSAT studying experience. I've been studying now for about three months. Initially when I graduated from my undergraduate career in December, I wasn't sure if I wanted to start law school in September of 2023. Or if I wanted to start for the fall of '24. So I went ahead and I signed up for the first LSAT within a month and I was really caught off guard. I thought it would be pretty simple but it ended up challenging me in a way that I wasn't prepared for. And being the first person in my family to pursue law school, I wasn't sure what the expectations or what the studying process was going to look like. So I definitely was caught off guard, and not only was I caught off guard, I decided to understand more about what the process was like applying for accommodations within a month of taking the exam. Because my first exam wasn't the results that I wanted to study for. And I also didn't understand how having a disability would impact my studying experience. So being able to study for the exam for the first month challenged me because I understood more about myself and what I should set for myself realistically, in terms of expectations. In about two months or so and applying for accommodations and learning what that process was like, I feel like I'm more prepared and I am better suited to take the exam, which I will be taking in April.
I'm very excited to take it. And I am also excited to learn about more students are feeling comfortable with disclosing their disability and learning more about what that accommodations process looks like. Just because when I first took the exam I didn't have my accommodations, and I feel like I was disadvantaged just because I didn't understand the forms I needed to fill out. I didn't understand the process of getting those actual accommodations in the paperwork that was needed. And setting a timeline and for making sure I had my accommodations set in place. Because the Law School Admission Council is very strict with the deadline. So I didn't understand when I first went into studying. And I also felt pressure because as well as applying for a certain cycle, you have to make sure that you have the LSAT score in time. Because it takes about a month to get your LSAT scores before you actually start applying to law schools. So that was something that I am still familiarizing myself with. The format of the Law School Admission Council getting my LSAT score in time, learning how to apply by a reasonable deadline and learning how to accommodate myself so I don't feel overwhelmed which I must imagine most students experience but having a disability amplifies that.
So moving forward, a case that I thought was really interesting recently is Dobbs versus Jackson Women's Health case. The legal issue is where all prohibitions on elective abortions are now deemed unconstitutional and the Roe v. Wade and planned parenthood was overturned. As you know this is a case that recently came to light and very controversial, but the court finds there is no constitutional vision guaranteeing the right to an abortion. I wanted to speak a little about how this case impacts people with disabilities, and specifically law students. The first point that I wanted to make in my research was that I realized that a lot of people like myself with disabilities already have a very challenging time disclosing, managing our health, taking care of ourselves and just being able to have that access to healthcare and resources. Now with this case being overturned, a lot of people with disabilities have to face the challenge of potentially traveling out of state and going to other jurisdictions just to be able to get the healthcare that they need.
This can be a challenge, because not everybody has those resources. And to be able to understand the Medicare that they need or just to be able to get access to people around them or have community of people that understand the things that they're going through. These lived experiences can be very challenging. Because when you have a disability, say different types of disabilities, and you're also facing this restricted healthcare access, it can be very challenging to manage what you're feeling inside, the trauma, the different experiences of uncertainty and not understanding what exactly is happening in each state because now this at the mercy of every state of whatever political decides. There is a lot of challenges that come along with it.
Speaking on behalf of lawsuits, although I plan to apply to the law school cycle 2024, from talking with other law students, they all seem to be very busy, I'm sure they're managing their bar prep, studying for their exams and what not. Being a law student with a disability can be very challenging if you're seeking an abortion, just because of how challenging it is to travel out of state, take the time of your daily routine and being inconvenienced by this restrictive and demeaning ruling that has recently come out as a result of Dobbs versus Jackson. I want to turn it over to Angelica, just because she has recently published a blog on The Coelho Center blog post and she also has the wonderful experience of speaking about reproductive justice as well.
ANGELICA VEGA: This is Angelica speaking. I was mentioning this in part of my speech that around May I wrote a blog post on reproductive rights are disability rights. When the opinion occurred and one of the rationale about overturning was the right to privacy. So not only abortion will become or the right to abortion will become unconstitutional, also other adjacent like cases that rely on decisioning will also be overturned. And one highlighted in the article was the right to contraceptives. Because I in full disclosure, I have polycystic ovary syndrome and one of the treatments is contraceptives. So I was very concerned that my access to the treatment can become restricted to me. So that's why it's more than ever we have to speak our truth and our lived experience. Because we have to make the change. And I'm really happy again the center's continuous encouragement and support they give to all of their students. The current, past, and future.
RONZA OTHMAN: Thank you. Thank you very much. Nira and Angelica have reminded us that we all started out as students. And clearly this pipeline program is wonderful, as we've heard from their lived experience and how they're translating them to law school. How about another round of applause for Angelica and Nira?
[ Applause ]
Our final panelist this morning is Professor Robert Dinerstein. Who, again, is the chair of ABA Commission on Disability Rights and Professor of Law at American University.
ROBERT DINERSTEIN: I'm going to speak up here, because when you're on that side of the panel I'm watching people in the audience and it's inevitable that whether you need it as an accommodation or just find it convenient, you're all looking over to where the screen is. So I feel like I'm doing something to save your necks. Because otherwise you're back and forth. Good morning, everybody. I'm not going to speak too long because I do want to give us time for Q&A. I have to say the most nerve wracking thing about what I'm going to say is, my visual description. In my head, I'm in my mid-40s, I have a full head of hair and I'm probably wearing a Hawaiian shirt. In actuality, I'm 5 foot 7, I'm bald I have a beard that used to be more brown but is now gray. I'm wearing attire for male presenters, a blue sports jacket, a blazer and a light blue button down shirt. So those of you who aren't able to see me, you ain't missing much.
[ Laughter ]
Okay. So as indicated, I am here primarily in my capacity as chair of the ABA Commission on Disability Rights which interestingly enough, doing the math, is this is our 50th year, so it's also the 50th year of Section 504 of the Rehab Act. And a lot of things going on, and sadly I'm old enough to know when all these things actually happened, as opposed to just reading about it. The Commission does a number of different activities which relate to so many aspects of legal education and the profession of lawyering. For our purposes today what I think is important some of the things we're doing to try to increase attend to issues of pipeline that we've been hearing about wonderfully so far. We are a small group, we have only 12 commissioners. My predecessor was here presenting yesterday. We have 17 liaisons from other parts of the ABA. We have two staff. So it's a pretty small group. So we're often looking to partner with other individuals and other entities in order to expand the reach of what we're doing.
And a lot of what we're doing within the ADA is to bring, or we hope to enhance a kind of consciousness about diversity. And we heard earlier, diversity is part disability, excuse me. Disability is part of diversity. That's going to be an obvious thing to say to this group. Sadly it is not so obvious, even to people who consider themselves to be adept and schooled in issues of diversity. So a lot of what we are about is to say, don't forget disability when they're talking about DEI issues. I will say there has been some greater recognition of that. But I was really struck by what we heard earlier, and I know as Angela said, the Commission had been working with LSAC with respect to this survey that was done. As the percentage of people who, first identified as having disabilities and then the reduced number who said they would disclose. Both I think are important pieces of information for us to have. And probably aren't shocking to this audience. But I think it's probably surprising to an audience of people that do not include people with disabilities or people who have thought about this.
And the Commission has been looking at this issue to try to help, be another entity that's going to encourage the gathering of data. We can't really know what the scope of the issue is, and how many folks we need to have as who need accommodations, what those accommodations look like. How many people are practicing law who have disabilities. All those things, where we have very bear kind of estimates. And part of it is we don't know at the front end how many people in law schools are willing to disclose they have disabilities. We have been working with the ABA council on the section of legal education admissions to the bar, which is the ABA entity that writes the standards for accreditation to law schools. And they have a diversity standard, which right now is kind of up in the air, because like everybody else, they're awaiting and frankly worrying about what the Supreme Court is going to do in the Harvard and North Carolina case.
But even before we get to that point, the ABA had proposed a standard after notice of comment for diversity, equity and inclusion that would say the following. Law schools shall ensure the effective educational use of diversity by providing, one, full access to the study of law and admission to the profession to all persons, particularly members of underrepresented groups related to race and ethnicity. 2, a faculty and staff that includes members of underrepresented groups, particularly those related to race and ethnicity. And 3, an inclusive and equitable environment for students, faculty, and staff, with respect to race, color, ethnicity, religion, national origin, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, age, disability, and military status. And then, it talks about what schools need to do with it.
Now when we saw that language, that first section, that A1, which talks about the special attention to race and ethnicity, left out amongst others, people with disabilities. It also seemed to assume those are two distinct categories. That somehow people with disabilities might not also be people of color or otherwise marginalized categories. So we said we think we need to add disability to that, and we've been urging that to the council. And we've gotten some resistance on that on a number of different grounds, like is it okay to ask about disability? Would a concern about privacy, what if people don't disclose, what do we do about this? And those are not invalid kind of questions, particularly in the issue of disclosure. But our response has been isn't it better to have some information about what the population looks like as opposed to just completely guessing? And secondly once you start getting this information, that's why I think the LSAC survey is so important. If people see it isn't being used, this is important, to discourage or to stigmatize or otherwise make it negative for people, but rather is something that can be used in a positive way, maybe actually more people would actually disclose.
So we need to really have that information. And to work backwards, you don't get the information just again by having a standard. You first have to ask the question. We've been working with the ABA questionnaire committee. There are by the way more committees in the ABA that you can shake a stick at, and that's coming from someone from law school with more committees that you can take shake a stick at. We're getting close and getting the questionnaire committee next fall to ask about disability. One of the questions interestingly that they have for us, when I appeared before the council well should we be asking about specific disabilities, we ask about blindness and Deafness and learning disabilities and bipolar disorders. We don't think that's important for this. We're also be concerned for a low percent of disabilities it might disclose particular people and you don't want to do this in this kind of information gathering.
What's really important is notwithstanding all the differences among people with disabilities within and outside of different categories, it's important to get a sense of the scope of what that group is. I will tell you as someone who's taught as American for 40 years, the number of students now who disclose disabilities, admittedly in classes that are oriented toward disability, so it's not necessarily a complete picture. But there are more and more students who feel comfortable disclosing their disabilities, which is terrific. Because it's both a matter of identity and not gist for reasons of accommodation, but because of the way they see the world. We know so much when we're talking about DEI issues, people need to see people like themselves in the different categories in which they operate. If you are a young person thinking of going to law school with a disability, you want to know am I going to a law school where there are people with disabilities?
Am I going into a profession where there are lawyers with disabilities? Am I going into a segment of a profession where there are lawyers with disabilities? And we have so many clients with disabilities who need to be represented not just by lawyers with disabilities but certainly including lawyers with disabilities. So this effort to get information which is in the weeds stuff I think is critical to get information. It's not the only thing however that needs to be done. One of the things we have to provide financial support for students with disabilities many of whom may be coming from circumstances where there's economic marginalization. So we have been working with a number of companies to develop internships or scholarships for students with disabilities. Sometimes they are sitting law students. They also include undergraduates. So we've been partnering with Microsoft, Prudential, Eli Lilly and company. We've had a lot of scholarships for these internships which is terrific. The commission has an intern program for students who are interested.
As we know there are also some, not enough, but some post graduate fellowship programs, including for example Brown Goldstein & Levy which has a law students with disabilities fellowship program and those should be increased as well. So giving opportunities for people to do those kinds of things. We have in the commission, since the early 2010s, have developed a pledge for diversity on the basis of disability. And we now have I think about 350 signatories to that. That includes law firms, government agencies and law schools. When I had a year during the pandemic as acting dean of the law school, which was a fun year. When I came in, I noticed that of the approximately 200 law schools in the country, we only had I think maybe about 50 that had signed the pledge. So with my access to the dean's list serv, let me tell you, you really want to read that if you have a chance. I was able to guilt and/or suggest to a number of law schools that hey, you too should be signing this pledge. So we got it up to about a hundred.
We're part way there. Not as far as you need to be. You call friends at a law school do you think your dean will sign it? Our dean doesn't sign anything like that. So maybe we need to work on some of our colleagues. In any event, we need to increase the number of entities that have signed that pledge. And then of course, we've got to do something with it. We can't just sign a piece of paper and put it on a self. But we actually have to help law firms, help government agencies, public interests, legal organizations not just to talk the talk, but to walk the walk, with regard to diversity in particular with respect to disability. I'm happy to answer any kind of questions later in the Q&A, but I wanted to give us time for that. So thank you for your attention.
[ Applause ]
RONZA OTHMAN: That was fantastic. Thank you so much.
Question and Answer Section
RONZA OTHMAN: We are now at the point where we are in our Q&A session. I think we have a mic runner? Great. So as I said, I am blind. It will not help you if you raise your hand and wave it around and all that good stuff. You'll just be getting some exercise. Make sure if you do that, that your fit bit is on that hand. If you would like to be recognized, please shout your name. What's your name?
AUDIENCE MEMBER: It's Morissa Fregeau. I have a question on how as I'm a corporate lawyer in house. So how can we help with the programs and providing internships, et cetera, as part of our diverse law students' programs? I have found through my years at in house counsel at different companies, that when I bring it up, like oh when we're looking at diverse candidates we also need to look at diversity, that there's this hesitation of oh, how do we deal with them. Which makes me dismayed. But I wonder if there's help or things that we can do, but also that you might help with corporations who might be willing to have students come as part of their diverse internship law student programs.
ROBERT DINERSTEIN: Just one thing, this is Bob Dinerstein. What we've done at the commission a couple of things. Which is some law firms have reached out to us and said we would love to hear you talk about disability as something we should be thinking about with our lawyers, with people who are applying to work with us. And so we've done somewhat might be called lunch and learns with a couple of different law firms. I'm going to be doing one with rose and gray in May. We've talked about do you even know how many lawyers have disabilities and that certainly would go to in house operations as well. And what can you do to make the people that you do have feel comfortable within that setting. One of them is if you're large enough, do you have some kind of affiliate organization within the firm or within the organization that where people might be willing, you might get some benefit from knowing that there are others, and also being willing to work with others.
And of course law schools have done things like that too with law student disability groups or disabled law students groups and I know one of my former students is here who was one of the co founders of our disability law society when he was a young man many years ago. And we have actually current members as well. So anyway, part of it is getting away from that sense of isolation that many people might feel. Because they may be the only one they understand to be in that group. That would be one way to do it. But your point, I think, is important. That my experience with people who aren't otherwise steeped in disability issues, they look at it and they think it's so exotic and they don't know what to do with it. They're worried they're going to say the wrong thing. And we know that actually you have to start somewhere. And if you come with a good heart toward these things, you don't need to feel like you're going to be judged in that way.
RONZA OTHMAN: Thank you, next question?
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Hello, this is Jalyn. Thank you for your talk. I'm a first law student and I have nonvisible mental health and physical disabilities. So my question, I loved your panel. I remember the LSAT experience. Something that me and fellow disability law student association members have been trying to figure out is how to overcome the barriers of getting accommodations. As a student that's far greater than the LSAT unfortunately. And just what your advice would be, especially for people with nonvisible disabilities. Just because many of us from low income backgrounds got evaluations through undergrad. And when that time runs out, they require very expensive evaluations that insurance doesn't often pay for. So I guess I'm just wondering what you all typically advice students or maybe even incoming law students that are trying to consider these factors, how to overcome those type of financial and bureaucratic barriers of quote unquote proving your needs.
RONZA OTHMAN: Great question. Anyone want to take it?
KATHERINE PEREZ: That's a tough one. Maybe this is responsive to your question or any specific experience, but I just wanted to comment that I get that kind of a lot of students come to me with these kinds of issues. Not only through our fellowship program, but I get a lot of law students at those 200 law schools across the nation who find my email and will email me about their experience so I hear this constantly. And one thing that The Coelho Center is doing, in partnership with the ABA Commission on Disability and the National Disabled Law Association is we're putting together a survey, not for the law students, not for the attorneys, but this is actually for administrators at the 200 plus law schools across the nation. Because we want to have a baseline and figure out how folks are doing their accommodations process because every school does it a little different.
Every school has a different culture. And law students know it too. Applicants know it. Some schools are known to be friendly and some are known to be more hostile right when it comes to accommodation process. So we want to have that baseline, and with those statistics we want to be able to advocate for law schools to do better, to be more accommodating. And so to me, I think the current status is that, in a lot of schools the students have to be their own advocates. And they need to know the law and advocate for themselves, ask for accommodations early, find those resources. But, at least what we're doing at my school and a lot of other schools I think, and if there's other law professors here, administrators here, it needs to come from us. The administration needs to understand this issue, and we need to step up. It's kind of like an ableist phrase. But we need to step up and make sure these students aren't falling through the cracks.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: I'll just add something. I had a terrible reasonable accommodation experience in law school and I have a visual disability but also some hidden nonvisual ones. And the person who was in charge of disability services only understood their disability and none other. The bar exam experience was worse. I had a reader who was assigned to me, who showed up and A, did not have any teeth, so I couldn't understand a word. And B, fell asleep half an hour into my exam, instead of actually reading for me. Both days. And so I had a backup plan, right? Plan B and plan C and plan E. And I did pass the bar on the first try, no thanks to her.
[ Applause ]
Thank you. But I remember that experience because it's trauma. Right? And so what I wish I knew then, that I know now, is strength in numbers. Community. Find an advocacy organization that's good at this. That's good at helping you navigate this process. If you were diagnosed with your disability or you received accommodations for your disability for the first time and you are in college, the law schools and LSAC, sorry, and the state bar is probably going to want every piece of information that you have related to your disability from when you were conceived. Well guess what, it doesn't exist. So you have to prove a negative. It doesn't exist. I don't have it. Maybe you developed a disability later. Maybe you just didn't need accommodations because accommodations could be fluid depending on what you're doing.
And so five other people have gone through this, it sounds like you're doing that with your network of friends and colleagues and some of these student organizations and things like that, message boards. Somebody has already invented this wheel, you shouldn't have to reinvent it. So jump on, and let them, the work that they did, the trailblazing that they did, pull you behind them.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Hi, I'm destiny and I'm in Professor Dinerstein's clinic right now. During my three years of law school I discovered I have psychosocial disabilities and cognitive disabilities and I have disabilities that manifest physically. But I'm also Black, LGBTQ, I'm doing a lot of things, and no one talked to me about having accommodations until I was a 3 year and also I didn't know what accommodations look like. One I didn't self identify because I didn't know, I've never stopped. So I didn't investigate into what could be causing I guess like discrepancies in performance. And now that I'm an adult, I don't know what accommodations can look.
Programs or initiatives or possible future partnerships that can at minimum educate people what accommodations look like. Because I've had friends I have one friend who has taken the bar four or five times, because he didn't know he had a cognitive disability prior to taking the Bar. And it's like a financial barrier, it's also discouraging. So if there's any scholarships to help people who need the bar. So I guess trying to navigate that when you're already kind of at the end of the finish line. Are there any, I guess, thoughts on that?
ROBERT DINERSTEIN: You know, it's a great question. I think one of the things that sometimes it's the people without disabilities don't quite recognize when they come across someone who has a disability is trying to understand how long they might have been dealing with it. As we know one of the issues with disability is it includes people who are born with disabilities, it includes people who have developed them later. It is not uncommon for people who have had disabilities to not need accommodations before law school to hit law school and then see they now need them. The amount of reading and everything else that's there. One thing that's not directly responsive to your question. For example in the employment context, outside of being the law student, there's the job accommodations network that the Department of Labor runs.
RONZA OTHMAN: We all had that same thought.
ROBERT DINERSTEIN: That's where people who need accommodations and employers who need to provide them, can look to see what kind of accommodations have been done for people with different kinds of disabilities. One of the things that it shows most accommodations are not particularly costly. Which is one of the concerns often that institutions, including universities, including law schools worry about. How much is this going to cost. And they overpredict the cost and consequently underaccommodate. I have to agree with what's been said, fairly or not at this stage, you have to be a really persistent advocate and talk to as many people as you can to get advice.
KATHERINE PEREZ: Askjan.org.
RONZA OTHMAN: And it is free. I think we have time for one more question. We're running a little bit behind into the break, but we started a little late.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Thank you. Cat, I'm in private practice in San Francisco. My local trial lawyers association started the diversity scholarship during my administration which was three years ago. And my question is whether or not there is a place to publicize that nationally. Because our scholarship would apply for anybody who was taking a job in our area. So that could be anywhere in the country. A lot of law students that we supported since we've started the scholarship have used that money to pay for bar prep courses. You can use the money for anything. And I'm hearing through my other TLAs in our area that they're doing the same. So this money is out there. Is the information getting to students, and is there a way to facilitate that?
ANGELA WINFIELD: So, yes, absolutely. Through LSAC we have something called law hub. And it's a place where individuals who are applying to law school, going to law school, can come back and get resources. And we're connecting them to pipeline programs, we're connecting them to scholarships. So yes, please email me. You can email me directly. You can pass the information along. We can collect it and add it to our database of information and resources that we provide. Absolutely.
RONZA OTHMAN: We'll take the one more question and then.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: I actually don't have a question. I just had some comments.
RONZA OTHMAN: What's your name?
AUDIENCE MEMBER: My name is Lucia Romano. I'm with Disability Rights Texas which is the P&A for Texas. My comment is reach out to your P&A for these students. Because there could be a lot of information online about how to get accommodations. For example we have a generator online to request accommodations. It is in the employment kind of arena, but you can modify it to, you know, draft something for accommodations for testing or for college. So that's one thing.
Another thing I wanted to mention is vocational rehab. And I know everybody is going to be like oh, they're awful. It depends on which state you come from. I know in Texas it's a struggle. But there may be some better ones out there. But they provide all kinds of resources like if you need extra tutoring, special tutoring to take the bar exam, financial support to take the bar exam. Anything like that, they can really they have so much resources that anyone with a disability should really tap into. So those were my and Jan that was already mentioned.
RONZA OTHMAN: I think most of the people in this room are happy to help any of the students. Everybody on this dais and some of the people who asked questions and presented this week.
[ Applause ]