uodsp: FW: [ABA-3D] Fwd: Nice article---saw this and thought of you

[Bill Spiry]

Yes, thank you.  I saw this article and its interesting.
. 


Bill
BSpiry at ComCast.net
-----Original Message-----
From: uodsp-bounces at lists.uoregon.edu [mailto:uodsp-bounces at lists.uoregon.edu] On Behalf Of Heidi von Ravensberg
Sent: Tuesday, September 29, 2015 5:05 PM
To: For DS group communication
Subject: uodsp: FW: [ABA-3D] Fwd: Nice article---saw this and thought of you


Found this in my archives, but it’s still timely …

From: The Disability Discussion Docket (3D) [mailto:3D at MAIL.AMERICANBAR.ORG] On Behalf Of Jason Goitia
Sent: Monday, August 17, 2015 6:27 AM
To: 3D at MAIL.AMERICANBAR.ORG
Subject: [ABA-3D] Fwd: Nice article---saw this and thought of you

I thought you'd also like this. I know Arian from the ABA BLS.


Sent from my phone, so please excuse any errors or brevity

Begin forwarded message:
From: "June, Arian" <Arian.June at wilmerhale.com<mailto:Arian.June at wilmerhale.com>>
Date: August 17, 2015 at 8:59:26 AM EDT
To: "Jason Goitia (jason.goitia at gmail.com<mailto:jason.goitia at gmail.com>)" <jason.goitia at gmail.com<mailto:jason.goitia at gmail.com>>
Subject: Nice article---saw this and thought of you Microsoft Turns Diversity Focus To Lawyers With Disabilities

Law360, Chicago (August 14, 2015, 3:52 PM ET) -- Long a leader in the push for diversity, Microsoft Corp.'s in-house legal term is turning its focus to lawyers with disabilities, an untapped talent pool with firsthand insight into a significant potential customer base for the company and one of the most under-represented groups in the legal profession.

The Microsoft legal and corporate affairs group's recent attention on people with disabilities has roots in a growing awareness of the trend toward expanding their civil rights and was encouraged by legal department team members who are passionate and outspoken advocates for the issue. It was a natural evolution as the team progressed along “the diversity maturity index,” as it’s put by Mary Snapp, Microsoft's deputy general counsel and executive sponsor of the legal and corporate affairs diversity and inclusion team.

“It’s sort of a continuum,” Snapp says. "It has begun with trying to recognize the trend, being very focused very broadly on diversity and having a couple very strong activists whom we really listened to — and it has made a difference in the department.”

In 2010 the legal and corporate affairs department signed on to the American Bar Association’s Pledge for Change, formalizing its commitment to furthering the inclusion of people with disabilities, and Microsoft sponsors the National Association of Law Students with Disabilities. But when legal department diversity team members set out to gather data about professional workers with disabilities, they were surprised at the dearth of information.

So as a step in its drive to open a dialogue about lawyers with disabilities, Microsoft’s legal and corporate affairs team launched a study that found people with disabilities face unique barriers on the road to becoming a lawyer. The team released the results to coincide with the 25th anniversary of the enactment of the Americans with Disabilities Act on July 26.

“The research in the area is pretty scant,” Snapp says. “To commission this study to bring things together from different places and to try to make things foot and tie was actually a pretty unique exercise for us. It told us there just was not much information out there on the topic of people with disabilities in the professional workforce.”

The study revealed that for people with disabilities, the breaks in the legal professional pipeline occur both earlier and later than a previous Microsoft study found they do among blacks and Latinos. That study, which Microsoft commissioned two years ago, found that the biggest drop-off of blacks and Latinos from the legal profession was at the college-to-law-school junction: They were graduating from college and bypassing law school for medical and engineering degrees.

However, people with disabilities are more likely to step off the legal education trajectory at the college level. After high school, 19 percent of people with disabilities enroll in four-year institutions, compared with 40 percent of the general population. They’re also much less likely to graduate from four-year institutions, and researchers found that there is a “particularly sharp decline” after the second year.

The study made note of several factors that may contribute — for example, the unwillingness to self-disclose. Among the students with disabilities who received help for their disability during high school, only 28 percent told their college they needed assistance. College students also are given fewer accommodations. While 94 percent of high school students with learning disabilities received accommodations, 17 percent of college students with learning disabilities received them. The researchers also listed technology gaps between course or exam software and assistive technologies, a lack of accessible materials, and the universal financial burden of attending college.

There is also a drop-off between college and law school. There is a 31 percent drop in the proportion of people with disabilities in the pipeline between college and law school, and the study notes that the drop is not caused by people with disabilities choosing other graduate schools — law schools are the graduate programs with the highest prevalence of people with disabilities.

When they graduate from law school, they face low employment rates. The study found that 47 percent of people with disabilities who have master's and professional degrees were employed, compared with 87 percent of those without disabilities. That’s lower than people with disabilities who have less than a ninth grade education, 64 percent of whom are employed.

“Unfortunately,” the study observes, “under-representation becomes a self-perpetuating cycle.” It quotes an attorney for the Disability Rights Legal Center who says the legal profession is unwelcoming to attorneys with disabilities. “Employers, and even courts, have struggled to provide basic accommodations,” the lawyer says.

The study also ruminates on the unwillingness to disclose. A 2015 National Association of Law Placement survey reported that 0.03 percent of lawyers self-identified as having a disability but estimated that 3.5 percent of lawyers have a disability. Microsoft found that many college students who received accommodations in secondary school don’t consider themselves to have a disability. But in the workplace, people with disabilities often don't make disclosures out of fear that they won’t be hired, that they will receive fewer opportunities or that their disability with be a distraction.

Self-disclosing “can be a heck of a scary step to take,” says Jenny Lay-Flurrie, Microsoft’s senior director for accessibility, online safety and privacy and chairwoman of the disability employee resource group. Lay-Flurrie experienced hearing declines over many years, and she says it took years to own up to the severity and learn to be a “visible” deaf individual who is unafraid to ask for accommodations rather than “deceptively deaf” and invisibly disabled.

“Disability is a personal journey, and everyone is at their own place on that journey,” Lay-Flurrie says. “Some feel very comfortable to identify, advocate and drive for what they need to be successful; others are concerned about factors that may be within or not within an employer’s control such as bias or perception — or coming to terms with the fact that they have a disability in the first place, whether temporary or permanent.”

What helps, she says, is creating the kind of workplace where people feel supported through coaching, mentoring, accommodations, benefits and training — all of which are being worked on through the diversity committees and initiatives at Microsoft.

“Our role at Microsoft is to create the right structures, frameworks and community that empowers individuals to bring themselves to work, all of themselves, every day,” Lay-Flurrie says.

For the company, the focus is not a new one. The employee resource group Disability at Microsoft has launched 12 employee connection groups over the last 15 years and hosted its fifth annual Ability Summit in May. Through its 2-year-old Supported Employment Program, Microsoft and some of its suppliers now employ 111 individuals with disabilities on its Redmond, Washington, campus, where they are given training and long-term support.

“Recently, we’ve chosen to focus on this space as, like many areas of diversity, we feel this is an untapped talent pool,” Lay-Flurrie says. Unemployment rates, she says, are double those of people without disabilities, and higher in some regions.

It’s also a strategic move: In a world with at least 1 billion people with disabilities, they’re a significant customer base for a technology company. It’s a no-brainer, Lay-Flurrie says: “Put simply, we need PWD if we’re going to do a good job of making products and services for all our customers.”

Lay-Flurrie says she is constantly reaching out to colleagues to pick their brains about best practices and experiences. It’s not a competition, she says. She encourages others in the industry to reach out to her to talk and to educate themselves through nonprofits focused on employees with disabilities, such as the U.S. Business Leadership Network.

Similarly, Snapp hopes the Microsoft study builds bridges between Microsoft's legal teams and other legal organizations committed to disability diversity.

“We want to start a conversation, we want people to talk about it, and we want to learn by doing,” Snapp says. “We would encourage conversations with other participants in the industry. Perhaps someone else is doing something great and it’s just not known — we’d love to hear about that.”

--Editing by John Quinn and Edrienne Su.

Arian M. June | WilmerHale
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Washington, DC 20006 USA
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arian.june at wilmerhale.com<mailto:arian.june at wilmerhale.com>

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