Abstract
An increasing number of prospective and current law students are seeking disability-related accommodations under the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA). Various accommodation requests include: extended time on exams (time-and-a-half, double-time, quadruple-time, or no time limit), modification of exams from essay to short-answer, individual testing rooms, modification of all exam from closed-book to open-book, large print exams, the presence of service animals for the sight-impaired and for those with stress disorders, audio/visual recordings of lectures, notetakers, no deadlines for papers, no in-class exercises, not being called upon to respond in class, a stand-up desk on which to write, special cushioned seats, moving classroom locations and time offerings, the use of computers, sign language interpreters, court reporters, absences beyond the stated policy, and reduced course loads, to name a few.
This increase in the number of law students with disabilities who seek accommodations should be expected. Twenty-five years ago, with the passage of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 (Section 504), school-aged children with disabilities began the slow process of receiving accommodated services in order that they might benefit from a public education. Congress enacted the ADA in 1990, after finding that 43 million people in the United States had a disability and that people with disabilities were being discriminated against in a variety of areas, including education. The result of these two major pieces of legislation is the growing number of prospective and current law students who have received disability-related accommodations in their past education and now expect similar accommodations in their legal education. The growing trend of students with disabilities entering law schools is evidenced by examining the number of applicants seeking special accommodations for the Law School Admission Test (LSAT), an increase of 1600% from 1991 to 1996.
As law schools prepare for an increasing number and breadth of disability-related accommodation requests, two questions should be asked. First, in light of anti-discriminatory laws, how does a law school protect itself when it denies admission to an applicant with a disability because the school believes the applicant is not qualified? Second, how does a law school protect itself when it denies a request for an accommodation because the school does not believe the request is reasonable? The purpose of this article is to answer these two fundamental and timely questions. After setting out the background law, this article examines how law schools can develop academic and technical standards that will allow them to refuse to grant unreasonable accommodation requests without running afoul of disability discrimination laws.
Recommended Citation
J. Patrick Shannon,
Who Is an "Otherwise Qualified" Law Student? A Need for Law Schools to Develop Technical Standards,
10 U. Fla. J.L. & Pub. Pol'y
(1998).
Available at: https://scholarship.law.ufl.edu/jlpp/vol10/iss1/4