NDLPA

More Than Representation: Why Disabled Law Professors Are Essential

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Disabled law professors not only inspire and cultivate a new generation of disabled lawyers but also positively impact nondisabled students’ views of and attitudes, providing a critical new perspective. Yet, disabled people are severely underrepresented among law school faculty. The numbers are even more stark for multiply-marginalized disabled faculty members. A number of barriers contribute to these disparities, including a toxic and exclusionary culture based largely in a history of white supremacy, law schools’ heavy reliance on adjuncts, the difficulty of accessing accommodations, the devaluation of disability law, implicit and explicit biases, the difficult path to professordom, and the leaky pipeline to becoming a lawyer, among other factors. We provide several recommendations for law schools to diversify their faculty, foster access and inclusion in hiring processes, and ensure disabled faculty are supported.

Disabled People are Underrepresented in the Legal Profession

While disabled people represent a significant portion of the population, they are severely underrepresented in the legal profession. Despite comprising more than 28 percent of the general population, only 1.99 percent of all lawyers at law firms identify as disabled. This disparity is particularly concerning considering the disproportionate rate at which disabled people interact with the legal system:

This lack of representation results in disabled people being more likely to be represented by nondisabled attorneys, despite research that shows positive outcomes when lawyers and clients share similar cultural or lived experiences.

Bridging the Gap Through Inclusive Legal Education

Disabled law professors can help improve representation in the legal profession, positively impacting both disabled and nondisabled law students.

For disabled law students, disabled law professors provide the following:

Representation and Role Models: Disabled law professors serve as role models for disabled students, showing them it is possible to become a lawyer. Although few studies have looked at the impact disabled law professors have on disabled law students, multiple studies have examined the positive impact Black law professors have on negatively racialized law students. Studies have shown that negatively racialized students get better grades in negatively racialized law professors’ classes than in white professors’ classes, even when the grading was done anonymously.

Mentorship and Support: Disabled law professors can offer unique mentorship and support, drawing on their own lived experiences to guide students navigating the challenges of legal education and the legal profession. This mentorship is particularly important given that disabled students often lack access to mentors who understand their specific needs.

A More Inclusive Community: Disabled professors help foster an inclusive community for disabled students, making them feel like they belong in higher education. A strong presence of minoritized professors demonstrates an institution’s commitment toward inclusive practices.

Support Countering Internalized Ableism: Disabled law professors can challenge the prevailing ableism within legal education, which often frames disability as a deficit. Their presence can help create a more affirming environment that values and celebrates disability, fostering a positive self-worth for disabled students. Many studies have shown that positive self-worth creates better outcomes for disabled students.

For nondisabled law students, disabled law professors support with the following:

Challenging Ableist Perceptions: Nondisabled students often have limited exposure to disability issues, leading to a lack of understanding and awareness and creating issues for disabled clients. Disabled law professors can challenge these preconceptions by openly sharing their experiences and expertise. Studies have shown that taking a class with a disabled professor significantly improves students’ attitudes towards disabled people, even more so than having a disabled family member or working with disabled people.

Promoting Disability-Informed Advocacy: Lawyers need to have a nuanced understanding of disability to effectively advocate for the rights of disabled clients. Disabled law professors can provide this crucial education by integrating disability into their curricula and exposing students to the social, ethical, and legal complexities of disability, something that is currently lacking in law school education.

The Transformative Impact of Disabled Law Professors

Beyond representation and mentorship, disabled law professors can bring valuable pedagogical approaches to legal education:

Barriers to Entering Legal Academia

Aside from an exclusionary culture that discourages, and often stigmatizes, requesting accommodations, prospective disabled faculty face a number of barriers that prevent them from breaking through into legal academia.

A Toxic and Exclusionary Culture: Many university policies are based in a history of racism and white supremacy, which is inextricably linked to ableism and eugenics. We must engage in systemic reforms of institutions of higher education, particularly law schools, to stamp out exclusionary and discriminatory policies that prevent disabled faculty members and students from achieving.

The Overuse of Adjunct Professors: Universities, including law schools, have trended toward overusing adjunct professors. While there is value to hiring adjuncts to expose students to professionals in the field, universities have largely increased reliance on adjuncts as a cost saving measure. For disabled people trying to break in, there are several issues with this set-up. First, it is not sufficient pay to be the only source of work, meaning a disabled professor would need to work a full-time job on top of serving as an adjunct. That is a significant barrier for chronically ill and disabled professors in particular. Second, adjuncts may not have access to health care and other benefits that are essential–even life-saving–for disabled people.

Difficult Path to Professordom: The process of becoming a full-time law school faculty member is particularly inaccessible.

  • Prospective faculty members are expected to have a portfolio of publications, which may be particularly difficult for disabled legal professionals who are already employed full-time.
  • Many law schools seek teaching experience, which as discussed above may be difficult for disabled legal professionals who must work full-time to seek.
  • Many law schools rely heavily on the Association of American Law Schools (AALS) Faculty Appointment Services (FAS) for entry-level recruitment. It is also one of the simplest ways to access information about positions across the country. There is a $290 fee to participate in the FAS, which is an additional barrier for disabled candidates, candidates of color, LGBTQI+ candidates, and candidates from other underrepresented groups who are more likely to have lower incomes, savings, and assets. While there is a hardship waiver, approval is at AALS’ discretion.
  • A call-back interview is a process in itself, often taking up an entire day. This expectation is completely inaccessible for people with many types of disabilities.

Devaluing of Disability Law and Other Areas of Expertise: Law schools often fail to prioritize courses in topic areas in which disabled people disproportionately have expertise, such as disability rights. To be clear, not every disabled legal professional is interested in disability or civil rights; however, our particular expertise based on our lived experience is often undervalued. 

Lack of Accommodations: Universities are notorious for denying reasonable accommodation requests–including for professors.

  • Universities have refused to allow professors to work remotely, or made it difficult or impossible to access this type of accommodation, even when deemed medically necessary.
  • Many university human resource (HR) offices still require copious amounts of documentation with specific jargon to prove the necessity of basic accommodations. One staff member at a large public university on the west coast said that HR refused to honor her accommodations because her doctor had described the condition as “chronic,” which was an “unspecific” term.
  • Some universities have strict grading deadlines and penalize faculty who submit grades hours, or even minutes, late. One professor at a large, private university on the east coast said they were formally admonished after they submitted a mid-semester grading report less than an hour late, despite having multiple disabilities on record with the university.

A Leaky Pipeline: The pipeline for disabled folks in law in itself is leaky, meaning there are fewer disabled people, particularly multiply marginalized disabled people, in applicant pools. Additionally, there are fewer disabled faculty members to mentor prospective and new disabled faculty members who may need support with application processes and navigating their roles. Pipeline issues begin as early as elementary school and continue through undergraduate education, law school, the Law School Admissions Test, licensure processes, and the profession itself. While organizations like the National Disabled Legal Professionals Association, National Disabled Law Students Association, and Coelho Center for Law, Policy & Innovation work toward creating this pipeline, there is still much work to be done. 

The Peril of “Publish or Perish”: Being a law professor in itself may be inaccessible due to publication and other expectations that permeate legal academia on top of teaching classes, class preparation, class assessment, student mentorship and support, and more. However, many of these expectations are unrealistic and should not be necessary to do the job; reforming these expectations would foster greater access and inclusion in the profession overall.

Implicit Biases: Achieving tenure is often the decision of committees of other faculty members, who may have standards and expectations rooted in implicit–or even explicit–bias. We know that Black and Hispanic faculty members who are equally as productive as their white colleagues are more likely to receive negative votes from their colleagues–particularly colleagues who are not as familiar with their work. When a majority of law school faculty members are white and men whose attitudes–and as a result, curricula–may be exclusionary or outdated. While productivity requirements in and of themselves are rife with ableism, equally “productive” disabled faculty members may still face similar barriers to seeking tenure. Many law professors are attached to older pedagogical methods and practices, from the Socratic method to banning laptops in classes. However, these practices inherently exclude and disadvantage disabled students. Given disabled professors’ lived experiences, they may adopt newer, more inclusive pedagogical methods, which may result in a negative bias from other faculty members.

Action Items for Law Schools

We urge law schools to prioritize the following action items to create a more just and equitable legal system.

Hire, Promote, and Grant Tenure to Disabled Law Professors and Administrators: Disabled faculty not only bring numerical diversity and representation to law schools, but they also ensure that legal education reflects the lived experiences and needs of marginalized members of society. Special care should be paid to hiring multiply-marginalized disabled professors. Having administrators with diverse backgrounds is even more imperative. Lived experience plays a significant role in leadership–inclusive attitudes trickle down. Law schools must therefore also prioritize hiring disabled administrators and deans.

Reform FAS, Hiring, Promotion, and Tenure Processes: This includes ensuring there are clear and accessible hiring and reasonable accommodation processes. Reforming these processes would help to foster greater inclusion and expand opportunities for underrepresented candidates, including disabled candidates.

Foster a Culture of Greater Inclusivity and Access for All, Including Faculty Members: We must improve the overall culture of our higher education institutions, particularly law schools, which has historically been based in racism, white supremacy, ableism, and sexism. Law schools may dispose of traditional notions of “productivity,” adopt universal design principles, adopt easy-to-follow and non-burdensome reasonable accommodation processes, and more. Ensuring there is a budget for access needs to be met, reasonable accommodations, and diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts is also critical–we know budgets are moral documents, and we hope law schools will use their budgets to demonstrate their commitment.

Utilize Inclusive Teaching Methods: Inclusive teaching methods, such as Universal Design of Learning–a teaching method which has students engage with each other, the subject matter, and the professor in multiple ways to meet the needs of different types of learners–not only positively impact disabled law students but also create a more equitable learning environment for many types of marginalized students. Universal design has been shown to positively impact learning outcomes for disabled and nondisabled students alike.

Integrate Disability into Law School Curricula: Despite a robust legal history, disability case history is rarely integrated into law school curricula. However, we know that all issues are disability issues. Additionally, because lawyers are likely to interact with disabled clients, it is important that they have a strong understanding of disability legal history and cultural contexts.

Conclusion and Takeaways

Although law schools do much to devalue, exclude, and discourage disabled law students and professors from thriving, we believe that law schools can take concrete steps to improve their culture and foster greater access and inclusion. The inclusion of disabled faculty, disability culture, and more inclusive pedagogies would not only benefit disabled students but would also support the millions of disabled people who interact with the legal system each year by ensuring they have culturally competent representation. Many of our recommendations and action items would create invaluable changes for the disability community at large and have little to no cost for law schools. But the cost of reinforcing these exclusionary systems is great.

For more information and advice from disabled law professors, check out our Career Exploration Series event on navigating legal academia with a disability.


If you have questions about this piece, or if you are a law school interested in collaborating with NDLPA, please email info@ndlpa.org.