Anonymous Deaf Law Student

Ay, sorry for my blogging neglect - things have been pretty busy for me in the non-virtual world 

It’s odd - it is only now that I think about my gender in relation with my deafness. Law is a relatively male-dominated field. I would say that my law school is approximately 60% male and 40% women, and all of you know that this is not exactly representative of our population. In fact, in the office that I am working in right now, is very male-dominated.

As a woman, I have to wonder, how does my gender affect how my professional peers perceive my deafness? Sometimes I think my gender makes my deafness even more of a liability because it’s a double-whammy of perceived weakness. Deaf and a female - ay!

Then again I haven’t been the perfect symbol of feminism. Ever since I was a child, I always identified more with boys and men, rejecting traditionally feminine roles. I have a little theory about that - a large majority of deaf children in my area were male, so most of my friends growing up were males. I took to their rough-housing and expletive-laced speech like fish to water. During primary school, I was the girl who played basketball, rejected makeup and the “girly” gossip. Sometimes I think my implicit rejection of traditional feminine patterns (hey, calculus was my favorite class in high school!) has a lot to do with my current course in life. Law, with its  poor work-life balance commonplace in large law firms, doesn’t always provide a welcome place for women.

In the end, my tomboyish nature has benefited me in the legal world. I can get along just fine with my male colleagues, joking and drinking the day away with them. To be honest, I think I would have suffered more in a more female-dominated workplace. I remember most of discriminatory acts (not all, of course) directed towards me originated from females. Female teachers would be the ones who complained about having me in their classes. My female classmates would be the ones who made snarky remarks.

In the end, maybe being deaf and in a male-dominated industry isn’t such a bad thing if you can swim with the sharks. Admittedly, this is a very limited viewpoint, and might have more to do with my personality than my gender. I would love to hear other opinions on this issue. 

It pains me to say this, but I am leaving DeafRead. I orginially joined Deafread hoping that I could present an unique point of view and encourage aspiring d/Deaf law students. However, these hopes become moot when DeafRead espouses a discriminatory and Deaf-centric policy by banning a certain blog.

I have posted about our need to UNITE in order to succeed (professionally, at least) and I cannot participate in an aggregator that thwarts this sentiment.

So, if you like this blog, please do bookmark me and say hi sometimes. I welcome everyone of all stripes, deaf, Deaf, Deaf-Blind, and many more. Hopefully there is enough supporters out there to make writing this blog worthwhile

I’m afraid that I don’t have the secret to succeeding, but I have made a few observations about successful d/Deaf people. There seems to be two kinds of successful d/Deaf lawyers: one that becomes a tireless advocate for d/Deaf and hard-of-hearing issues, usually enveloping oneself in Deaf culture OR being a successful attorney. The former is great for people who want to pursue that goal and is somewhat easier to do, But what about the latter? It’s indisputable that it’s harder to succeed in the “hearing” world - there are more doubts, more skepticism and frankly, a LOT more ignorance.

One thing that I’ve observed is that it is crucial to understand the hearing world and their attitude towards deafness. I do understand the instinct to reject the hearing world as “oppressive,” “discriminatory,” and “audistic.” Honestly, I HATE the word audism - it implies a conscious intent to demote deaf people, and most of the time this is not true. Most hearing people have never met a deaf person before and their only frame of reference is TV, books and their imagination. Of course they will think that deafness is a huge burden, so would you if you lost your sight suddenly. Of course, some people, even if they are educated about deaf culture/ways of life, still discriminate against deaf people. They are bigots and shortsighted fools. It is dangerous to compare racism and audism because to a vast majority of people, you cannot compare a disability to race.

The prickly attitude about “audistic” hearing people will only get in your way if you aspire to professional success in a hearing-dominated field (like law). These sentiments will alienate your co-workers and bosses, and frankly, you become a difficult person to work with. What most people want is a competent co-worker/employee who WORKS WELL with others. If you harbor insidious feelings of hatred and resentment towards everyone else, how nice can you be? The hearing world values propriety, politeness and above all, conformity.

I’m not saying these values that I listed above are necessarily “good,” but that’s reality. To beat the game, you must play the game. If you want to see more fellow d/Deaf people become successful, they will have to conform to some degree to the hearing customs. For example, I know it’s not normal to expect people to form instant bonds with me like we do in the Deaf culture. I accept that, because otherwise, I would be perpetually disappointed and I would be “weird.”

Hopefully a story will illustrate my point. A few days ago, I asked a co-worker to tell me where to drop off some paperwork. He insisted on leading me to this place and proceeded to tell the human resources officer that “she can read lips really well.” Did I want to strangle him? Hell, yes. Did I make a snarky remark? No, I just smiled and said, “thank you very much for your help, I’ll be fine on my own next time.” There’s an old adage that you can catch more flies with honey than vinegar.

One does not need a cochlear implant or hearing aids or other fancy technologies to understand how to succeed. One must relate to the hearing world, particularly in a personality-centric field like law. These are your peers, like it or not and they have a lot of power until the day that you rise through the ranks and seize that power for yourself.

One interesting thing that I’ve noticed about myself and other law students is our cultural differences. I won’t pretend that I have fully immersed myself in the Deaf community (how could I have done so? I grew up in a mainstream educational environment and went to a hearing university), but I have adopted some of the patterns that we see in Deaf people.

One thing I love and hate about the Deaf culture is its propensity for bluntness. It can be slightly uncomfortable when someone says “oh my goodness, you lost soooooooooooo much weight! You were sure fat before!” One part of me always cringes because in the “hearing world,” that is a big no-no and it’s difficult to respond politely. At the same time, it’s refreshing to get rid of the fakeness and euphemisms that defines “polite society.”

The legal world is something different. It’s not just the professionalism, but it is the uber-formal atmosphere. After all, this profession revels in formality: one has to follow specific court procedures, to adopt specific writing structures and use obscure language. Moreover, once you get into the ranks of elite law schools and/or firms, you go out to fancy restaurants.  The average “BIGLAW” associate earns $160,000 dollars a year in a firm in a major market (usually New York, Washington, DC, San Francisco, Chicago or Los Angeles). That kind of money opens up a huge stratum of society that may not have been available to you before.

This has proved to be one of the more daunting parts of law school for me. Of course, this is not exclusively due to my involvement in the Deaf Culture - it also has to do with the fact that I do not come from an upper-class family and the town that I grew up in isn’t exactly urbane. However, I find myself at a loss of words when my peers talk about going to Aspen for a skiing vacation, going out to dinner at a five-star restort and being able to shop at the most expensive stores. This kind of cultural schism engenders a stange feeling inside of me - the feeling of not quite belonging. Of course a person could say, so what? Money isn’t a big part of being a cultured person or even a good lawyer. That is true, but the issue before us today is how one’s culture background can affect one’s success in the legal profession.

People like me who are part of a minority cultures do suffer from one major disadvantage that is usually invisible - the lack of connections. I do not want to overuse the buzz word, “network,” but networking has shown itself to be an important part of the professional world. Both of my parents are in the educational profession and their interaction with the world of law is quite minimal (as they are law-abiding citizens). This is in stark contrast with many of my peers whose parent or family friends are partners at law firms. These people can ask for references from these family friends, while many minority members who are more like me, cannot do that.

In such a connection-heavy profession, any kind of assistance can be invaluable for a lawyer, no matter where s/he works: at the state attorney’s office, a small law firm or a large corporate law firm. Also, it can be a lonely world, especially for a d/Deaf lawyer, because not that many of our peers understand our life or professional experiences. Most connections are made on the basis of similarities. That is why you hear stories about a person giving an individual a job because s/he went to the same undergraduate institution or grew up in the same town. That is the way that the world works, like it or not and the d/Deaf and hard of hearing individual usually struggles in this respect. This is why I think having a more cohesive and unified support system for d/Deaf and hard-of-hearing lawyers would be a major step into a future of increased inclusiveness. However, as long as this group remains split along the cultural lines, I do not see this happening. This split is quite shortsighted and will only hurt the growth of the d/Deaf and hard of hearing lawyer population.

Hello again! It has been a long while. My excuse (and it is a damn good one too) is that I have been consumed by the monster(s) that we call Law School Finals and the writing competition. It wasn’t pretty, but I finished everything, and now I can return to my blogging.

This topic has come up a few times and many people seem to have strong feelings about it - my decision to use the d/Deaf label. One may ask why I choose such a clunky way to refer to one community (deaf)? Yes, we can all be under the illusion that we are a single and unified community, unified by our common hearing loss. However, I feel like this ideation of ‘deafness’ does not face reality. What most of us in the d/Deaf community consider ‘d’eaf are people who generally exclusively use spoken and written English language and have minimal contact with the ‘D’eaf (i.e. signing) community. The ‘D’eaf community is, by default, the community full of people who use ASL in their everyday lives. Of course, such categorizations are rarely neat and tidy. Hell, I’m a living example to that. I use ASL often, but not quite everyday. I use spoken English everyday and for about everything, but I wouldn’t call it my exclusive form of communication. However, despite the fact that the labels do not always fit everyone, categorization serves an important purpose: to reach general conclusions.

Now, the million-dollar question is: what kind of purpose does splitting the deaf community into two serve? I’ve thought long and hard about this and reached one conclusion (perhaps not the only one of the day) that these two groups face different struggles in the legal world that should be addressed separately. For example, ‘D’eaf lawyers seem to have even more difficulties finding a job than ‘d’eaf lawyers do - perhaps it is because of the latent discrimination against people who do not use speech or the chronic difficulties of ASL-based education. Moreover, ‘D’eaf students must deal with receiving appropriate interpreters for law school and their jobs (a gigantic feat unto itself).  On the other hand, ‘d’eaf lawyers must deal with misconceptions about their disability - you would be surprised how many people assume that, just because one can speak clearly, that one can hear well. Also, ‘d’eaf lawyers must deal with receiving their own form of accommodations, and oftentimes, law school is the first place where they truly needed classroom accommodations.

Also, categorizations serve an useful way for us to understand the world. The human mind must divide, compare and contrast in order to reach any useful conclusions. It is futile to think that calling everyone who has a hearing loss, ‘deaf,’ will help us in our quest to improve access to legal employment for d/Deaf persons. Also, I think the Deaf community is such a vibrant and interesting community and should be recognized separately, but equal to, the greater community that ‘d’eaf people are involved in. 

I’ve discussed the roots of the expanding pool of the d/Deaf lawyer (for better or worse). Now, the next logical step is to look at what the future Deaf lawyers will look like. This is just my educated guess from my experiences with Deaf Culture, current trends in law schools and law itself.

Fortunately, law is slowly opening its doors to people with disabilities. It’s just a crack, but it’s a start. There are quite a few d/Deaf lawyers at BigLaw Firms (for you non-lawyers out there, BigLaw firms are big corporate firms with more than 150 or 200 attorneys). Also, there are numerous of d/Deaf lawyers in public interest, government and smaller law firms as well. These trends bode well for any d/Deaf person entering law school.

It’s given that there will be an steady increase of d/Deaf law students, hopefully an exponential rise . My hope is that the number of d/Deaf lawyers will reach critical mass and produce an organized professional association of our own. At my school, the Black Law Student Association (BLSA) and the Latino American Law Student Association (LALSA) are incredible networking tools. The members help each other get prestigious firms, clerkships, government or public interest jobs. These minority groups represent a real voice pushing for inclusion in the mostly-white-and-affluent law firm world. I must admit, I am a bit envious of their networking power and ability to convince prestigious employers to consider other factors other than grades and the school’s name. 

Now, the question is, where is our voice? There have been efforts to establish official professional groups for Deaf and hard of hearing lawyers (I’m not sure what its name was, so I apologize in advance). However, the effort fell apart because of the internal split in the deaf community along ASL/oral/CI lines. Unfortunately, the internal turmoil in the deaf community has (perhaps irreparably) fragmented the d/Deaf lawyers. We cannot advocate for an industry-wide change in how employers view lawyers with disabilities without a strong group advocating for ourselves. An unified voice is much stronger than scattered individual voices.

Of course, there is the National Association of Law Students with Disabilities (http://nalswd.org/) which is a wonderful organization. However, I do think that d/Deaf lawyers face unusual resistance from employers. In such a communication-heavy profession, many employers feel leery about hiring a d/Deaf lawyer. We need a group that actually does understand d/Deaf people’s unique needs to be able to advocate for the idea that deafness can be seen as a strength, perhaps even a “diversity” factor, and not necessarily a crippling liability.

Also, I am curious about how Cochlear Implants (CIs) will affect the face of the typical d/Deaf lawyer. Honestly, I don’t see a problem with the impeding rise of lawyers with CIs. I can only hope that things will be easier for them than it has been for other d/Deaf lawyers thus far. However, the only concern I have with lawyers and CIs is diversity. From my own experiences (and trust me, I’ve met many people with CIs,) the most successful Deaf people with implants tend to come from affluent families.

The correlation between implant success and affluence shouldn’t be surprising. Affluent families are more likely to have insurance coverage that will provide funds for CI surgery and processors. Also, affluent families tend to have more time and resources to devote to their children, ensuring that they master the AVT approach. Of course, one can say, “same old, same old.” Perhaps that person is right – historically, law has been a white-shoe, predominantly white and affluent profession. However, that is changing today, and I’m glad about that. Moreover, people should try to change this aspect of law – after all, lawyers have an incredible power to change people’s lives. We need diverse viewpoints to implement this power in an equitable and understanding way.

Unfortunately, affluent families tend to be white Anglo-Saxons. I’m afraid that d/Deaf lawyer population will remain predominantly white. As a minority myself, I’m not entirely comfortable with that idea. I have to struggle whether to conform to the white and “hearing” culture or stay true to my heritage, as an double minority. Moreover, I don’t want my allegiances to conflict with each other (and they have before). I would love to see some progress in this area. I hope the rise in the d/Deaf lawyer population will cure this problem, but I’m not so sure it will. Perhaps I am asking too much, but I can always dream, can’t I?

            If you think that the Deaf community is small, try the d/Deaf lawyer community. The best estimates thus far, according to www.deafattorneys.com, estimates that there is 170 or so d/Deaf lawyers. That’s not much, if you think about how many d/Deaf people there are. Just to put it in perspective, there are approximately10 million with some degree of hearing loss, 1 million functionally deaf people. http://jdsde.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/11/1/112. However, things are getting better. There are more and more d/Deaf students in law schools across the country. What’s notable is that there are more and more prelingually and/or ASL-using Deaf persons entering law school.

            To be honest, most of the d/Deaf lawyers (and I emphasize, most, not all) that I’ve met were either oral or late-deafened. I have the utmost respect for these folks - they struggle with different issues than people like me, the pre-lingually Deaf with roots in the Deaf culture. Many pre-lingually and ASL-using Deaf folks struggle with the English language because ASL is a different language, with its own syntax and grammatical structure. Also, there is a history of delayed language acquisition because of late detection of hearing loss. That said, I wondered what triggered the rise of these Deaf folks in law school? After all, law is a profession that demands perfection in English and oral advocacy.

            The easy answer would be the obvious, the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), which was passed in 1990. Most of my fellow budding Deaf lawyers grew up protected by the ADA. Many of them cite the ADA as the source of increasing number of Deaf folks in higher education. The ADA did indeed improve enforcement of IDEA and the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, which made the word accommodation actually mean something. However, just giving equal access in the classroom is not enough. Much of a child’s linguistic development  takes place long before he or she enters a classroom. Deaf children, historically, has had problems with linguistic delay and subsequent inability to properly express oneself in English. Without this ability, a future in law is fruitless. So, along with the ADA, why are Deaf adults entering law school at record numbers?

            Of course, I have my theories. I do think the ADA did help directly, but it had indirect effects as well. By framing non-discrimination towards people with disabilities as a civil right, the ADA created a culture of empowerment amongst d/Deaf folks. Even though not all of the provisions in the ADA have enough “teeth,” but the fact that people with disabilities were now a protected class, counts for a lot. On a personal level, I grew up with the mindset that even though accommodations could be sub-par at times, but I was entitled to them. Accommodation was no longer a privilege, but a right. 

  Also, the ADA mitigates some of the discrimination in hiring. After all, law school is pretty damn expensive, why would you want to go to law school if you knew that you would have severe difficulties finding a job? However, the ADA does not wipe away employment discrimination, but it helps.  

Just to clarify - the ADA did require that higher education schools provide services, something not covered by IDEA and the Rehabilitation Act. However, in order for Deaf students to enter higher education in higher numbers, they need the tools that they developed during their infancy and primary schooling years.  No law school would take a student, d/Deaf or not, that could not do well on the LSATs, write a coherent sentence and express himself/herself clearly. The ADA did enable qualified d/Deaf folks to enter higher education at more diverse insitutions, however, other factors contributed to the rise in the numbers of qualified d/Deaf people. 

On the education side, I think the few factors really improved the literacy of some Deaf folks. One was early intervention. By early intervention, I mean finding out that a baby is deaf and giving him/her access to language (I don’t care if it is ASL or via CI, but there must be access a language), avoiding a crippling linguistic delay. I was lucky - I was diagnosed at 4 months old, a rarity at that time. Soon after my birth, hearing tests became mandatory. I think that early intervention on my part was the crucial factor, differentiating me from many other Deaf kids with poor English skills. 

Also, increased education for the parents about hearing loss helped. My mother was clueless about this issue when I was born, but there were organizations and resources to help her. One can’t expect hearing parents to automatically know how to take care of a Deaf kid. It’s unrealistic. Increased parental awareness has fostered increased parental involvement. I believe that for any kid, d/Deaf or not, parental involvement in education is vital. However, it is even more crucial for Deaf kids. Deaf children can’t just pick up language by listening to people talking. They have to be taught and parents are the best people to do that. Unfortunately, that is not always possible (busy parents, parents who refuse to learn ASL or work with their children if they have CIs, etc.)

One another factor is captioning. I remember when I was very small - I couldn’t watch any TV shows or movies because they weren’t captioned. So I just watched Charlie Chaplin’s silent movies. However, when captions became widespread, I could access the mainstream ‘language.’ By reading the captions, I got a sense (albeit, somewhat artificially) of how people expressed themselves, and some vocabulary. 

Educational access is one thing and language acquisition is another. It pleases me to see that recent developments (i.e. mainstreaming, captioning, ADA, etc) have enabled a higher degree of English acquisition by Deaf children. However, there are still severe problems in this regard. Oftentimes, I will meet a Deaf adult who can barely string together a sentence. One thing to keep in mind is that language acquisition is CRUCIAL for any successful Deaf lawyer. The increasing number of d/Deaf folks entering law school suggests that something is working. That makes me wonder what future d/Deaf lawyers will be like. 

Interviewing is a potential minefield. Every law student (hell, pretty much everyone) suffers through this ordeal. In fact, one of my friends compared interviewing to prostitution.  That might be going a bit far, but interviewing can feel a lot like prostitution. Law students have to face a host of questions before they enter the interviewing room: what to wear (this is especially true for women), how to spin your resume, how to sell yourself and of course, how to avoid coming off as a jackass. Deaf folks like me, there are more questions than answers. How much should I talk about my deafness? Should I use an interpreter? How do I know when a question crosses the line? Well, I don’t have all of the answers today, but these questions are worth thinking about.         

To me, my deafness is part and parcel of my being, so I have no problem talking about it. To be honest, if my deafness fazes certain law firms, I don’t want to work there. However, let’s see how long my cavalier attitude holds up after the fall recruiting season. In fact, my deafness is a large reason why I decided to enter the legal profession. I usually mention this when the inevitable question comes, “So, why did you decide to go to law school?” However, this is usually as far as the issue goes because most interviewers do not want to address the pink elephant in the room and they change the subject. Why do they do this? I suspect it is the fear of violating employment laws.          

In a way, I feel that banning questions about disability is counterproductive. In reality, only direct questions about one’s disability are “illegal,” such as “how much hearing loss do you have?” and questions along that vein. Most employers think any questions about disabilities are illegal. The fuzzy definition of “illegal” questions about one’s disability usually results in the interviewer remaining silent on the subject. Some people might think that it’s great that the interviewer does not address the question of disability and that ensures an “even playing field.” Unfortunately, I don’t think this is true. Ignorance is usually the root of discrimination and keeping the topic of disability off-limits breeds ignorance. People naturally fear what they do not know. To tell the truth, I can’t blame them. It’s a natural urge to retreat into familiar waters, i.e. dealing non-disabled persons.             

My most successful interview was when the interviewer asked me how I communicated in a work atmosphere. To me, that’s a perfectly legitimate question because a large percentage of hearing people still have no idea how d/Deaf people function. It’s a sad commentary on society, but it is reality. Information is the only way to change mistaken perceptions. I told my interviewers how technology has vastly improved the ability of d/Deaf persons to participate in workplaces. Law is a profession that is conducted via writing. Emails have virtually replaced telephone conversations. Phone conversations can still be conducted via relay. I could go on but I won’t. He smiled at me and I got a job offer the next day. Since my interviewer obviously had no idea how I would function in a professional atmosphere, which makes me wonder how many of my other interviewers had the same attitude. That thought scares me more than the thought of being asked inappropriate questions.   

If the interviewer does not address the pink elephant, it becomes a catch-22 for me. If i avoid the issue myself, the interviewer might walk away with his or her mistaken preconceptions firmly in place. However, if I press the issue, I come off as pushy and overtly ‘disability-oriented.’ I do not want to guilt someone into giving me a callback or a job offer (which would rarely happen anyways).  I lose either way. My most successful interviews, the interviews where I got a job offer afterwards, has been the ones where the interviewers asked me about my disability and how it affects my ability to do the job. These questions might be on shaky ground with the EEOC, but the results are undeniable.    

Information is power, not something that people should afraid of.  I’m not endorsing the abolishment of EEOC rules, instead, I am proposing a clarification of guidelines regarding ‘illegal’ questions. I’m in favor for a loose rein on questions about disability, but that’s just me.

Welcome to my reinvented blog! I decided to switch platforms because this is sleeker and just much cooler! Hopefully you enjoy the layout a bit more.  

I’ve never been one of these people who bemoan the fact that I am Deaf. I figure that my life is pretty damn good, so I have no right to complain about it. However, I have noticed a few unexpected benefits of being Deaf in law school (perhaps even in law?) Of course, this is only from my experiences, as limited as they may be. Also, I do not mean to say that being d/Deaf does not suck sometimes. It can be frustrating at some points, but sometimes you do get rewarded.