Tackling the last taboo: disability in law

In January a report from Cardiff Business School, “Legally Disabled? The career experiences of disabled people working in the legal profession”, hit the headlines, proclaiming that disabled lawyers face both overt and unconscious bias on a daily basis.

According to the report, more than half of the solicitors and paralegals interviewed believe their career and promotion prospects are inferior to those of non-disabled colleagues, and a significant proportion of disabled people have experienced forms of disability-related ill-treatment, bullying, or discrimination.

WIPR spoke to Debbie Foster, the professor at Cardiff University Business School who co-authored the research, to find out more.

Why did you decide to undertake this study?

My specialist area of research became disability and employment after I experienced a break of two years from my academic career after being diagnosed with a number of autoimmune conditions that also resulted in chronic fatigue.

On returning to work I realised that despite growing interest in diversity and inclusion (D&I) policies and practices in business and management, very little research existed on disabled people in employment, particularly in professional occupations. It was as if they didn’t exist—or perhaps, I speculated, they were just unexpected.

I was also struck by the way disabled people were commonly portrayed in public life, as welfare scroungers, needy, in low skilled and low paid jobs and a drain on society. I couldn’t recall the last time I had seen an interview, feature, or academic study that had focused on a successful disabled person, unless their achievements were seen as “exceptional” or unusual.

Yet I knew that as someone who was well qualified and in a professional role, I couldn’t be unique. We were hidden and, consequently, an isolated group often unable to access the mutual support that other groups with protected characteristics could.

There was a reason disabled people remained hidden. They were too afraid to “come out” if their impairment was non-visible, for fear of discrimination. An academic study that would offer anonymity and confidentiality, therefore, was the perfect vehicle for locating the talented disabled people who exist in our professions.

What are your thoughts on the current state of disability diversity in the legal profession?

The data we collected from disabled people in the profession involved eight focus groups, 55 individual interviews and nearly 300 questionnaires. The responses very much suggested that disability as a characteristic has been severely neglected in D&I initiatives within the profession.

What struck me were the sheer number of diversity initiatives in the legal sector and the significant investment in initiatives, reports, awards, and celebrations. On closer inspection, however, it became apparent that disability was rarely mentioned in these initiatives, even when attention was paid to intersectional inequalities.

A hierarchy of diversity priorities appeared to exist, with gender firmly at the top of this and disability very much at the bottom. It appeared that disabled people were rarely catered for, mentioned or expected. Where they were it was often assumed they would be the client, litigant or defendant, not the advocate or professional advisor.

The impression we got when we talked to disabled people and other professional stakeholders was that disabled people were often not even on the agenda. Most stakeholders held their hands up and admitted that their disability diversity work was under-developed or non-existent.

Some said they had not been pushed to do work in this area because so few disabled people identified as disabled in their organisation, while others said they were uncomfortable talking about disability.

Many were aware of mental health campaigns that had sought to address stigma and cited how these had become successful in stimulating more open dialogue, but mental health was seen as something that could be packaged as affecting everyone and part of a wellbeing initiative. Disability was often described as “just too difficult”.

What was the most surprising find of your research?

We shouldn’t have been surprised, but during interviews we were impressed by how much disabled legal professionals wanted to tell us their story. These were well qualified, articulate people, some of whom had never talked to anyone before outside their immediate circle of family and close friends, about their experiences.

Most of our interviews lasted between two to three hours and people often remarked how helpful it had been to articulate these experiences and make sense of them, often for the first time. In some instances, we found people realising as they spoke how dreadful some of their experiences had been and that they had been discriminated against.

My co-researcher Natasha Hirst and I sometimes finished interviews and found we needed to process the information alone or have a cry. We knew, as disabled people ourselves, that to be successful in a career it is necessary to become thick-skinned, but it is still very difficult not to internalise other people’s negative reactions and behaviour.