Forty Years of Disability Policy in Legal Education and the Legal Profession: What Has Changed and What Are the New Issues

While many portions of this Article are informed by work on a range of task forces, committees, workgroups, boards, and speeches given to organizations (including the Association of American Law Schools, the American Bar Association Section of Legal Education and Admission to the Bar, the Law School Admission Council, the National Conference of Bar Examiners, the National Association of Law Placement, the National Association of College and University Attorneys, and the Association of Higher Education and Disabilities), the views expressed in this Article are my own. i am also informed by my own experiences as a faculty member in legal education since 1976 and as an administrator (Director of Admissions, Associate Dean for Student Affairs, Associate Dean for Graduate Studies, and Dean) at various times since 1976.I am grateful to a number of individuals and organizations that have provided opportunities for me to develop my perspectives on higher education and disability law. These individuals include Leigh Taylor, E. Gordon Gee, Betsy Levin, Frank (Tom) Read, the late Marilyn Yarbrough, and Michael olivas. My work seeks to carry out my goal of being an "advocate through education"-that by informing individuals and institutions about the law, they might better put in place policies, practices, and procedures, and make informed decisions about how to address situations involving individuals with disabilities through proactive means rather than through litigation.The preparation of this Article was assisted greatly by my research assistants Robin David Rice and Jonathan Rayman. Becky Wenning and Rita Siegwald were very helpful in preparing the manuscript drafts. i appreciate the support of my scholarship by Dean Susan Duncan.During law school at Harvard, Brandeis's eyes began to fail. He read constantly and suffered the eyestrain common to law students who read by gaslight. His eyes gave out completely, however, during the summer after his first year at Harvard, while he was 'reading law' in Louisville with his brother-in-law. [An oculist] counseled him to think more and read less. Brandeis decided that he could do so if his friends read to him, and it was in this fashion that he completed law school.1I. INTRODUCTION AND OVERVIEWA number of significant events occurred in 1973. In sports, the Miami Dolphins won the Superbowl,2 Secretariat won the Triple Crown,3 and Billie Jean King beat Bobby Riggs in the famous battle of the sexes on the tennis court.4 The Godfather won the Oscar for Best Picture.5 Eileen Heckart won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress in Butterflies Are Free for her portrayal of the mother of a blind man who begins to explore independence.6 Internationally, the Vietnam War was winding down and the Yom Kippur War occurred in Israel.7 In the United States, Richard Nixon was sworn in for his second term as President, which would later end due to another 1973 event, the Watergate Hearings.8 In the legal world, the Supreme Court decided Roe v. Wade9 and San Antonio v. Rodriguez.10Not widely recognized as a significant 1973 event, however, was the September 26 passage of the reauthorization of the Vocational Rehabilitation Act that included Section 504. Section 504 provides that:No otherwise qualified individual with a disability . . . shall, solely, by reason of her or his disability, be excluded from the participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.11The Vocational Rehabilitation Act marked a critical beginning to providing equal treatment and reasonable accommodations for individuals with disabilities in the United States, though its significance was not realized until much later.12 There was certainly little, if any, consideration of what it might do to change legal education and the legal profession.In 1973, no one anticipated the enormous impact this law-and later the Americans with Disabilities Act13-would have on legal education and the legal profession. …