Navigating Law School and Beyond:
A Practical Guide for Students Who Have Disabilities

2. The Law School Admissions Process

Did the following situation happen to you when you applied for admission to a law school?

Though law schools now provide disability accommodations for students, not all universities and law schools make information about accommodations available in alternate format such as Braille, audiotape or diskette. One survey participant was surprised (and not pleased) that he was forced to get someone else to complete his application forms for law school, because the documentation was not available in an alternate format.

Mitch intended to pursue a law degree and took steps to ensure that his disabilities would not be an impediment. His undergraduate school had an effective accommodations policy that facilitated his learning experience. Knowing he would need a similar environment to succeed in law school, he did research before applying anywhere. (His strong academic qualifications allowed him a choice of schools.) He contacted the Deans at his "short list" of law faculties and the special needs coordinators at their universities, to learn about specific accommodations available. He selected a particular law school primarily on the basis of its superior framework of accommodations. He thought that his research time had been well spent, as he possessed a good picture of what he could expect when he arrived for first year and had a reasonable anticipation of being accommodated appropriately during his years of studying law.

Across the country, significant barriers to educational opportunities remain for students with disabilities. Academic institutions have responded by adjusting their admissions policies to attain more representative first-year classes. Many universities have implemented education equity policies and programs to alleviate barriers and ensure that students with special needs are not only admitted and graduate, but achieve their full academic potential. (Adapted from Donna Eansor and Larry Chartrand, Canadian Law School Academic Access and Support Programs, 1997, at page 1.) A general rule of thumb is that admission accommodations are independently determined by each department or faculty, whereas academic accommodations are the responsibility of the campus Disability Services Office, in association with a law school’s designated equity official and the individual student.

There is no universally applicable standard against which applicants for law school admission are measured. Each law school determines its own admissions guidelines. Most Canadian law schools have established formal policies and practices by which to assess applications from candidates who identify themselves as having a disability, but other schools take a more ad hoc approach. The admissions policies of law schools outside of Québec are summarized in Appendix D, titled "Digest of Admissions Policies for Applicants with Disabilities at Faculties of Common Law". The admissions policies of Québec law schools are noted in Chapter 12.

Individuals with disabilities may apply as regular applicants or in whichever discretionary categories the law school may offer. There is no requirement that students with disabilities must apply as discretionary applicants. However, in cases where the nature and extent of the disability have a significant impact on undergraduate performance, we encourage applicants to apply as discretionary candidates. This approach should help to ensure that the application is considered in the context of all relevant factors.

Eligibility for special or discretionary categories of admission is not a guarantee of acceptance at law school. Nor does eligibility ensure complete or satisfactory academic accommodation. Each law school included in this study encourages individuals in certain "non-traditional" categories to self- identify when applying. Those with a disability are generally asked to indicate how their disability or related disadvantage may have adversely affected their academic performance or ability to participate fully in undergraduate or extracurricular affairs. Although such circumstances may be considered by a law faculty when evaluating candidates, there is no obligation on law school admissions officials to place extra, if any, weight on them.

"It is not contrary to human rights law to ask applicants to self-identify if the purpose is to overcome the effects of past discrimination. However, self-identification is a contentious issue for people with disabilities. Historically, discriminatory stereotypes and assumptions have been used to deny opportunities to people with disabilities. Consequently, direct questions about a person’s disability may cause him or her to feel very anxious and fearful about disclosure." (A Framework for Action, at page 39).

Self-identification is voluntary and some students may decline to disclose a disability when applying, concerned that the admissions committee may regard him or her as a less qualified or "second rate" candidate as a result. Reluctance may be felt by those with learning or psychiatric disabilities, who may hesitate to self-identify for fear that their disability will be mistakenly equated with a below-average level of learning aptitude (Adapted from A Framework for Action, at page 39). Also, other students may wrongly perceive an accommodation as an unfair advantage, especially in the case of invisible disabilities.

Law schools sometimes ask applicants to use language that couches inquiries about disabilities in negative terms. For example, an applicant may be asked to describe how his or her disability may make it difficult to gain access to or excel in legal studies. Although questions about the effects of discriminatory barriers can be informative, questions about how a disability has served as a source of enrichment in a person’s life may be equally informative. (Adapted from A Framework for Action, at page 38).

The admittance policies implemented by most law schools now involve multiple admissions categories, which may include "Regular" applicants, "Discretionary" applicants (including students with disabilities), "Mature" applicants and sometimes "Aboriginal" applicants. This classification system is designed to ensure that all applicants are evaluated with their peers and that circumstances that may have had adverse impacts on undergraduate performance do not cause unfair disadvantage in the evaluation process. Some sources say that candidates are applying to law school in unprecedented numbers, leading to escalated competition in all of the admissions groups.

Participants at one focus group wondered why there could not be a programme set up for students with disabilities that is similar to the pre-law programme for aboriginal students in Saskatchewan. This course prepares aboriginal students for attending law school. Taking the course may be linked to a conditional acceptance by a law school. One focus group participant suggested that such a course would give students an accurate picture of what they would face at law school, including the attitudes they would encounter. The course would also teach students how to do a summary or "brief", of a law case.

There is an accommodation element built into the system whereby students make one application through a central agency for admission to any law school in Ontario. The application package includes a Personal Statement in which the applicant may say why he or she wants to go to only one of the schools, perhaps because of the local availablity of a suppport regime related to the applicant’s disability. (Contact information for the Ontario Law School Application Service is given at the end of the "General" list of law school data in Appendix A.

The consensus of those who participated in our research is that candidates with disabilities should give themselves every fair opportunity to be competitive, including identifying any circumstance that a law school admissions committee ought to take into consideration in evaluating their applications. Little if anything will usually be gained from hiding a disability, whereas seeking and receiving accommodations allows a student more scope for reaching her or his potential. A student who is reluctant to disclose a non-visible disability might be able to arrange an accommodation through a central Special Needs Office serving the whole university campus, without law professors or classmates becoming aware of the disability or noticing that an accommodation has been provided.

When choosing which applicants to admit, all faculties of law outside of Québec give some consideration to applicants’ scores on the Law School Admission Test (LSAT). As Chapter 4 explains, disability accommodation during LSAT testing may be available. In addition, some law faculties choose to be flexible concerning the weight attached to LSAT scores for certain candidates. (There may be one or two law schools that show such flexibility for all candidates, but we have not been able to verify the existence of such a policy at any particular faculty. It is worthwhile for the applicant to make his or her own inquiries on the issue.) While some schools waive the LSAT requirement in exceptional cases, most require an LSAT score from each student. Test scores are not weighed equally at all universities. Some schools place less emphasis on LSAT results when considering applicants and more on a student’s personal traits and experiences that could produce added educational benefit for that student or for classmates. Others emphasize the difficulty of undergraduate courses in which the student has performed well. Many, perhaps most, law school officials are aware that LSAT scores may be a flawed or unrepresentative indication of a student’s capacity and should not be evaluated in isolation.

Most law schools and some bar admission programs offer students the possibility of studying part-time as an accommodation for special needs. Some schools, for example Dalhousie Law School, encourage students to take a reduced course load by studying part-time over a longer period, if they need more time to accomplish their academic work. Focus Group participants also said some good (but not uniformly good) things about part-time studies at UBC, Calgary, and Victoria. (Other law schools may have equally fine part-time regimes, which survey respondents did not happen to mention because of other personal priorities.) As we noted in Chapter 1, a law school may reserve only a few places in first year for part-timers. Applicants should take this potential limitation into account and not assume that they will automatically be accepted into a part-time program.