The seventh annual Blogging Against Disablism day is today, on Tuesday, 1st May 2012. This is the day where all around the world, disabled and non-disabled people blog about their experiences, observations and thoughts about disability discrimination. In this way, we hope to raise awareness of inequality, promote equality and celebrate the progress we’ve made. I once wrote a post for the legal blog, Legal Cheek, describing the practical difficulties that disabled students like me, have in training contract interviews. But this is a different post!
I have often written on this blog about inclusivity and accessibility in relation to law and legal education; and I strongly recommend their twitter thread @legalcheek.
Actually, the firms on the whole are very good at making you feel comfortable for the interview. So much so you end up feeling very uncomfortable (as a result of the ‘Does he take sugar?’ syndrome). However, I would say almost too comfortable, in the sense that you do feel that the Partners concerned were taking meticulous care. In a sense, this is a case of ‘damned if you do, or damned if you don’t’.
My disability is multi-fold. I see double all the time, therefore I often voluntarily have to shut one eye to avoid seeing double. This is because I was in a coma for six weeks in the summer of 2007 due to meningitis. I now have also a cerebllar dysarthria (speech problem), but I am told that my speech is comprehensible. Secondly, I have trouble walking. I have a condition which is known as ataxia, which means I can easily go off balance, and I look as if I am mildly drunk. I find that London cabbies immediately know that I have ataxia, even if I hail a cab from outside a pub (I do not drink alcohol any more); they are very discerning, and, of course they have a right to refuse to pick you up if they wish and they can justify it. The handicap means I have to take it steady while walking (I won’t be doing the London Legal Walk 2012, but the organisers have kindly given me the chance to do sponsored tweeting for it, which makes me very happy as I volunteered for 5 months last year in a law centre in London in welfare benefits, as a law student approved to do the LPC).
I think for training contract interviews, some candidates do not even know that they require ‘reasonable adjustments’. I am very influenced by David Merkel, the lawyer in charge of the Law Society’s ‘Lawyers with Disabilities’ group. I went to their Christmas bash in 2010, and David told me, at a quiet moment aside, it was all about giving law students ‘a chance to show what they can add to a law firm, on a level playing field‘.This I feel is very true. Disabled citizens like me don’t like being made to feel ill, which they can sometimes do in the application procedure for training contracts. They’re not ill, they’re just different. Unfortunately, this Government, which stopped my Disabled Living Allowance without any warning or notification, makes me feel unwanted. I refuse to allow that perception of me, even if Katie Hopkins makes hurtful tweets like this. I cried for a bit after I read it, but with all due respect having completed my MBA recently I feel confident about business too, but in a different sense. I am 37, with several good postgraduate degrees, including in business, law and natural sciences, so I feel that I can bring value to society, even more than a popular TV show. Ironically, I feel @Lord_Sugar appreciates ‘value’ in business.
Finally, I am most grateful to @BADDTweets for alerting me to this, which is the Twitter stream for “Blogging Against Disablism Day”, run by @goldfish and @themanoutside (#bad2012): http://tinyurl.com/BADD2012. I particularly appreciate the chance to voice my experience of disability and disabilism here. All I can say to disabled and non-disabled citizens that it can be, in any context, very insidious and subtle. I am very lucky in that the law school I’m in does not “make me feel ill” (in any way you wish to interpret this legally or not!), but rather instead wanted and valued, and it is a joy to study my Legal Practice Course at BPP Law School, Holborn.
