Disabilities and Inclusion
Tuesday, December 3, 2025 is International Persons with Disabilities Day. Many lawyers will be busy lawyering on Tuesday and will not have time to think about how we, both as a profession and as individuals, can think inclusively about disabled clients, co-workers and other lawyers.
We know that there are many days of remembrance. This can feel overwhelming, and it is tempting to zone out on yet another special day. But this year, please consider how the legal profession handles disability within our community.
Law is an intellectual career. We make our living through our thinking skills and not by lifting heavy objects or shimmying up ladders. It is a career that can accommodate different physical abilities utilizing tools and resources.
I know a couple of visually impaired lawyers who have service dogs, and I know lawyers who use wheelchairs for a variety of reasons. No one argues that these lawyers’ intellectual work products are less valuable than those of a person without a service dog or a wheelchair—or at least I haven’t heard these comments. Most of us understand physical disabilities when we can see them. On this International Persons with Disabilities Day, let’s remember to recognize our colleagues who may face greater challenges but are great lawyers.
If we have a colleague with a visible physical disability, we generally think about activities that work for them. We don’t schedule a five kilometre hike in the mountains as a team building exercise when one team member walks with a cane, and we wouldn’t book a planetarium visit when a team member is blind.
But there are other disabilities—both physical and mental—which are invisible, and let’s use International Persons with Disabilities Day to increase our awareness of how invisible disabilities may affect our colleagues and to talk about how to be inclusive.
I began my career as a junior corporate lawyer in a transactions practice. Deals often kicked off with long meetings with both clients (some of whom flew in from out of town or out of country) and both sets of lawyers. These were marathon sessions where we drank coffee and tried not to be the first to suggest a bathroom break.
We also went without food in some kind of twisted exercise of proving mind over matter. I remember watching what seemed to me to be mealtimes slip by with no mention of breaking for food. And because I was young and had a fast metabolism (at that point in my life), I regularly lost five pounds on a deal which I regained without too much effort.
I didn’t like missing meals, and I thought it was barbaric that everyone assumed we would carry on as if we weren’t biological organisms. But I could manage with a couple of days of altered meal schedules.
But what if instead of being a young lawyer with a fast metabolism who believed in meals at regular times, I had been a young lawyer with diabetes who needed food at regular intervals in order to process insulin? The obvious answer is that we would expect that the diabetic lawyer would disclose their disability and request accommodation to be able to eat at appropriate intervals.
We would like to think that no one would be afraid that disclosing a disability would encounter discrimination, but we live in the real world. We know that a senior lawyer, trying to be “helpful”, might choose not to put the lawyer with a disability on a file that is going to involve long hours, and that being excluded from these types of files may halt the lawyer’s career progression. So, it is not surprising that many lawyers with invisible disabilities choose to keep their disabilities private.
And while we would expect that most people with a rudimentary understanding about diabetes would think that a short nutrition break is reasonable to accommodate a diabetic lawyer (or client!), lawyers with invisible mental health disabilities may not encounter the same response.
Let’s look at two common types of invisible disabilities. First, substance use disorder is a disability for the purposes of Alberta’s human rights legislation. We know that individuals with addiction may be in recovery, but they remain addicted (to use AA terminology.) It is difficult for lawyers and students in recovery to attend legal community events which focus on alcohol, and, in my experience, many people still ask a person who is consuming a non-alcoholic beverage why they aren’t drinking.
Assist has been advocating events in the legal sector that do not focus on alcohol, or which provide desirable non-alcohol options, and the Recommendations to the National Study of the Psychological Health Determinants for Canadian Legal Professionals include, as Recommendation 8.4, encouraging moderation in alcohol consumption at corporate/formal or social events, or even excluding alcohol from some events. But should a new hire, a lawyer, student or staff member, have to out themselves as a person with a disability in order to participate in social events?
I remember being a pregnant lawyer navigating not disclosing pregnancy earlier than necessary while immersed in an alcohol-centric culture. My solution was to walk around at firm social events with a glass of wine in my hand. If anyone paid close attention, they may have noticed that the volume in my glass wasn’t decreasing, but no one appeared to notice this.
I recently met a young lawyer who had an even better strategy during her pregnancies. She carried a glass of wine as a prop as well, but she had a confederate who would trade out her full glass for an emptier one periodically!
Life would be much simpler if people weren’t scrutinized for their non-drinking choices, and this can be accomplished by offering attractive alcohol-free options. When the options are, in fact, attractive, it is easy for a person to say that they are trying the mocktail. Enough said.
The other type of invisible disability common in our profession is mental health challenges. Data in both Phase 1 (Canada-wide) and Phase 2 (Alberta) show high rates of depression, anxiety, psychological disruption and burnout: 
(This is my summary chart showing data extracted from Phase 1. Any errors are mine and not the researchers.)
According to Alberta’s human rights legislation (section 44 (1) (h)),
A mental disability is any mental, developmental, or learning disorder. The cause or duration of the disorder does not matter. Some examples of mental disabilities include:
- dyslexia
- depression
- anxiety disorders
- post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)
- autism spectrum disorder (ASD)
- attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)
- obsessive compulsive disorder
- schizophrenia
Drug dependence, alcoholism, and other addictions may be a physical or mental disability.
We know that a significant percentage of lawyers experience depression and anxiety (see the chart above) and that these conditions can be long-term or recurring. Add in neurodiverse lawyers (which can include ADHD, autism spectrum and dyslexia), allowing for lawyers with PTSD (which may include secondary trauma to which lawyers supporting clients with trauma may experience), and factoring in that lawyers may have obsessive compulsive disorder and, potentially, well-managed schizophrenia, you can see that a myriad of invisible mental health disabilities may be prevalent.
Having practiced employer-side human resources law for much of my career, I know that employers—and co-workers—become frustrated by the idea of “guessing” at accommodations. My preferred approach is to design events from the inside out keeping in mind accommodations to the greatest extent possible. Instead of thinking about what you want to do and then cutting back based on individual needs, start by thinking inclusively about what you can do. This can be as simple as ensuring that you have a variety of beverage and food options, allowing participation using online technology, and considering what you know about your team’s activities.
Here’s an example, if you are planning a pizza party, start with a provider who provides a variety of crusts and toppings. My family has vegan members, so we order from a pizzeria which offers vegan toppings and crusts, as well as gluten free options. Then everyone chooses from the options that are available. This is much less frustrating that ordering from a provider with a narrow menu and then having people raise concerns that their dietary restrictions cannot be accommodated.
Another way of approaching this issue is to think about accommodating your team members the same way you would accommodate your clients since we are often more open to accommodating the people who pay our bills. I am going to cite two old stories from my early practice years to illustrate this. Back in the 1980s, it was common for people to smoke while they worked (yes—law offices were filled with ashtrays and cigarettes!) I had an assistant who was pregnant who shared a work area with another assistant who smoked at her desk. My assistant asked the office manager if she could move to a different location because she worried about the effect of smoke on her baby. Her request was denied, and she was told to suck it up.
A few months later, we moved to a new office in a smoke-free building(!), and I was on a team supporting clients from a foreign country where smoking was still prevalent. My firm was acting for the lender, and the borrower’s counsel, also located in our lovely smoke-free building, was hosting bilateral meetings. My colleague and I watched with interest as lawyers from the other firm pulled out ashtrays (from somewhere!) for our clients. This is a very backwards analogy since we were accommodating a harmful practice—but it shows the difference between how we often respond to team members as opposed to clients and other parties.
If someone asks for an accommodation that isn’t difficult to grant, remember that you may not need to ask why they need the accommodation. And if the team member discloses a need for accommodation, listen without judgment. Let them tell you what they need rather than offering what you think they should have. If the accommodation is extensive or not easily achieved, then you may want to seek legal advice and you may need to request a medical note. But these are the exception and not the rule.
So, this Tuesday, let’s think inclusively. We know that lawyers face a range of physical and mental health challenges, and that those of us who have not experienced a disability to date may yet encounter this issue. Law is a big community, and there is room for all of us.
Loraine
