Around Syracuse Law

Professor Ian Gallacher Launches The Legal Writers Toolkit

Professor Ian Gallacher believes the world needs good lawyers, and he wants them to be good legal writers too. To this end, he is developing The Legal Writer’s Toolkit for all current College of Law students and alumni, and he hopes it will eventually be available to prospective students as well.

According to Gallacher, writing is thinking: “You can’t write well unless you think well. It is important for lawyers to write well because it allows them to show the quality of their thinking.”

Hosted online, The Legal Writer’s Toolkit will be organized by writing topic with both video and non-video-based content. Gallacher says he hopes the toolkit will help legal writers at any point in the writing process. “When they encounter problems, they can start here,” he says.

The traditional model for legal writing assistance at law schools has been the writing center, notes Gallacher, which is typically a faculty-led, student-staffed physical space. In a writing center, support happens in person when a student has an assignment due. After making an appointment, the student will get general help on their assignment through peer-to-peer counseling.

“A writing center model is a fine one,” Gallacher observes, “but it’s an expensive option and would be difficult to manage in a future that includes COVID-19 social distancing.” So at a time when centers of learning and student support are transitioning online, The College of Law is well-positioned to adapt its writing assistance rapidly to this change. Gallacher says the project was conceived before the COVID-19 crisis occurred, but that it’s certainly timely.

Gallacher notes one complication of COVID-19 closures, however: “My plan was to use the campus video production facilities to record a lot of this content, but I suspect this will be happening in my basement now.”

As of June 2020, initial non-video content for the toolkit—a reading list—is complete and available to incoming students. Gallacher asked several faculty—including Dean Boise and Vice Dean Keith Bybee—to select books they thought incoming students should read before law school, and he encouraged Bybee to select his own book, How Civility Works.

Focus questions accompany each title to help students understand the texts and “move their reading approach to the more active style required in law school, where students need to ask questions of the texts they’re reading in order to get the most out of them,” Gallacher explains.

If students complete the entire reading list, they will have a tremendous advantage in their first year of study, Gallacher says, with subjects ranging from negotiation techniques to technology’s impact on the law. The first iteration of the complete toolkit will be available this fall, with plans for the site “to grow as quickly as I can add material,” he says.

“It is important for lawyers to write well because it allows them to show the quality of their thinking.”

Gallacher joined the College of Law faculty in 2004 to lead the Legal Communication and Research (LCR) program. “Syracuse has a very liberal and engaged approach to legal writing education, which made joining the faculty extremely appealing,” Gallacher says.

Gallacher explains that Daan Braveman—College of Law Dean from 1994 to 2002—wrote in the December 1989 Journal of Legal Education about the importance of doctrinal professors teaching legal writing, a program he named Law Firm. “Daan’s article was groundbreaking,” says Gallacher. “It was one of the first signs that doctrinal faculty were alive to the importance of legal writing as part of the first-year curriculum. That made Syracuse a very exciting place for someone dedicated to the teaching of legal writing and for research to come.”

Professor Richard Risman came to Syracuse in 1998 and directed the Law Firm program until 2002. That was at that time legal writing was becoming a discipline in its own right, so Risman decided to teach more and the College made his position a tenured appointment, which was rare.

“The LCR program evolved from the idea of doctrinal teachers teaching writing as part of their courses. They came to learn that teaching legal writing is really hard, so once there were enough people identified as legal writing educators, LCR was possible,” Gallacher recalls.

Now at 63 years old, Gallacher has decided to try something new with The Legal Writer’s Toolkit, and Professor Aliza Milner has been named the new LCR Director. Teaching at Syracuse since 2006, Milner is described by Gallacher as “incredibly experienced and fabulous. She will take LCR and drive it into the future.”

With a stable writing faculty core and a continuing desire to create better legal writers, Gallacher—who in 2018 was awarded the Thomas F. Blackwell Memorial Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Legal Writing by the Legal Writing Institute and the Association of Legal Writing Directors—sees The Legal Writer’s Toolkit as a natural next step for the College.

“Syracuse is a place where we care about people. I obviously care about Syracuse students the most, but I also care about anyone who wants to be a better legal writer,” Gallacher says.

Helping to Make the World a Better Place for All

In 2002, a first-year law student arrived in Syracuse from Texas after hearing about
a new course in disability law, taught by Professor Arlene Kanter. She and other students soon prodded Kanter to offer more disability-related courses so they would be equipped with the knowledge and skills needed to secure a job in the relatively new field of disability law.

It took little prodding for Kanter to agree. By 2005, the faculty had approved the nation’s first Disability Law and Policy Program (DLPP), one that included the first joint degree in law and education, with a concentration in disability studies.

The Texan student was Julie Morse G’05, L’05. She and Crystal Doody G’05, L’05 became the DLPP’s first graduates. Both work at Legal Services of Central New York in Syracuse, representing individuals and families with disabilities, as well as clients with low incomes, on a broad array of legal issues confronting them. Over the past 15 years, DLPP has enrolled more than 300 students from the US and 14 other countries.

“Students bring questions that I would never think of, due to their geographic diversity, familiarity with technology and social media, and often their lived experiences as young adults with a disability.”

Passion & Persistence

Responding to the growing student interest in disability law with passion and persistence, Kanter worked closely with faculty in the School of Education to establish a new University-wide Disability Studies Program as part of her project for the 2005 Meredith Professor of Excellence in Teaching Award.

In fact, Syracuse University’s long history of disability research and advocacy was one of the reasons Kanter accepted her tenure track position in 1988. Faculty from the University’s Center on Human Policy had been experts in cases she worked on as a lawyer at a national disability law organization in Washington, DC. Today, Kanter holds a courtesy appointment in the School of Education.

Over its 15 years, DLPP has grown to include more collaborations across campus, as well as a curricular program for students who wish to specialize in disability law but who do not seek a joint degree. DLPP also offers students real-world legal experience through the Disability Rights Clinic, research positions, study abroad opportunities, and externships in London and cities throughout the US. Original graduates Morse and Doody are now externship supervisors for the program and continue to hire DLPP graduates at their office.

In 2014, with funding from the Open Society Foundation, DLPP started a master’s of law program for international students. Lawyers from such diverse countries as Argentina, Brazil, China, Ethiopia, Iraq, Kenya, Saudi Arabia, Spain, and Syria have participated, returning to their countries to work in the disability law field. In 2020-2021, the College will welcome scholars of international and comparative disability law into its new Doctor of Juridical Science program.

DLPP also hosts visiting scholars, including this year’s Fulbright Scholar, Dr. Smitha Nizar, a law professor from India who is working with Kanter on a project regarding the reproductive rights of women with disabilities.

Every Step of the Way

“No other law school offers such an array of disability-related academic programs and co-curricular opportunities,” Kanter observes. “We even have a student organization, the Disability Law Society. This, too, was a national first.”

DLPP strives to connect scholarship with the classroom, with Kanter inviting her students to work with her on projects and co-author articles. She sees her students as colleagues and future leaders in the field.

“Working with the students is my favorite part of my job,” Kanter says. “Not only am I realizing my professional goal of working for the rights of people with disabilities, but I get to bring my students with me every step of the way.”

Kanter continues, “When I helped draft the Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities (CRPD) at the United Nations, for example, my students were active participants in the process.” For the past several years Kanter and her students have been invited to present their research at the UN General Assembly, the CRPD Committee, the Commission on the Status of Women, as well as a congressional committee.

“Students bring questions that I would never think of, due to their geographic diversity, familiarity with technology and social media, and often their lived experiences as young adults with a disability.”

Remarkable Success

Currently, Kanter is working with the Association of Higher Education and Disability and rising 3L Lillie Hiegel on a project assessing inclusion of students with disabilities in US law schools, and with advocacy organization Humanity and Inclusion (HI) on a project to raise awareness about violence against women with disabilities.

With HI, Kanter and Lucky Mahenzo Mbonan LL.M.’20 have built a research tool to assess the rate at which different countries are adopting policies to protect girls and women with disabilities from gender-based violence. Two years ago, she and Everlyn Milanoi Koiyiet LL.M.’15 worked with Disability Rights International on a report about abuse of children with disabilities in Kenyan orphanages.

Kanter says the first student she had who was blind—Koert Wehberg L’08—may have taught her more than she taught him. “He taught me how he experiences the world and the importance of universal design and technology, such as text-to-speech software, which allowed him to participate in class on an equal basis with other students,” Kanter says.

DLPP graduates have gone on to remarkable success. For instance, Wehberg is now Executive Director of the city of Philadelphia’s Mayor’s Commission on People with Disabilities, and he teaches disability law at Temple University Law School. He also was one of only a handful of graduates to receive the Equal Justice Works Fellowship.

Another DLPP joint degree student—Robert Borrelle Jr. G’13, L’13—also received the Equal Justice Works Fellowship and is now a staff attorney at Disability Rights California. Julie Morse has the distinction of being the only College of Law graduate to have been awarded the highly competitive Skadden Fellowship.

Sense of Belonging

To Kanter, disability rights is one of the most important civil rights issues of our time, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic when people with disabilities may be treated as expendable. “Disability rights is about equal rights and ensuring access, inclusion, and a sense of belonging for all people, regardless of how they may walk, talk, or learn,” she says. “That is not easy within the highly competitive law school culture.”

DLPP has now been recognized as one of the most innovative disability-related academic programs in the world. On Feb. 20, 2020, at the office of the United Nations in Vienna, the Program received the Essl Foundation’s Zero Project Prize for Innovative Practices, the only US law school to receive this prestigious international award.

“It is really quite remarkable and exciting,” Kanter says of the award. “I attribute it—as I do all of our successes—to my extraordinary students, with and without disabilities. I think Zero Project recognized our program because we strive not only to teach disability rights but also to recruit and support future lawyers with disabilities.”

Looking to the future—and at the suggestion of alumni—a new DLPP alumni association is in the works. Kanter wants to see it develop into a formal mentoring program: “Ultimately we will want to raise money for scholarships to support more students with disabilities and for students who want to go into disability rights law.”

At its core, Kanter says DLPP is a tight-knit program, assisted by professors Cora True-Frost L’01, Michael Schwartz, Doron Dorfman, and Suzette Melendez. To this end, she spends countless hours urging colleagues and DLPP alumni to hire her students because they have skills and experience that can be gained practically nowhere else.

“My goal is for our graduates not only to find a job but to find one that will mean something to them and that will, I hope, help to make the world a better place for all,” Kanter says.

BBI Continues Its Work on Behalf of the Landmark Legislation

July 26, 2020, marked the 30th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act, civil rights legislation that prohibits discrimination against individuals with disabilities in all areas of public life—including jobs, schools, and transportation—and all public and private places that are open to the public.

For the Burton Blatt Institute, the anniversary is a time for celebration and reflection. While the landmark legislation and related legislation (including the Americans with Disabilities Act Amendments Act of 2008) have done much to accommodate and integrate disabled persons—and to change society’s views and attitudes toward disability—barriers to full inclusion still exist.

Helping to oversee BBI’s ADA 30th anniversary commemoration— including at the website adaanniversary.org— University Professor Stephen Kuusisto, Director of Interdisciplinary Programs and Outreach at BBI, discusses the ADA’s profound effect on society, education, and culture, and what the future holds.

Thirty years on, how would you characterize the effectiveness of the ADA?

The ADA has been remarkably successful as a change agent for American culture, which isn’t surprising because one of its goals was to assist the disabled to enter public life. It’s no longer unusual to see wheelchair users, guide dog travelers, the deaf, and autistic folks participating in every area of civic life.

Along with this participation we see changes in the arts and popular culture. In the 1970s no one would have imagined prime time television shows featuring characters with autism. Disability is now better understood as a part of who we are as a nation.

One also could argue that the ADA created a new geographical imagination. That is, the legislation induced needed changes to public spaces; along with that came a host of new features for architecture, design, and cyberspace.

Observers talk about an ADA mindset among a new generation of disabled persons growing up after the legislation passed—can that idea be extended to the rest of the population? 

It’s no longer acceptable to shrug off disability, although some might still wish to do so. For younger folks who’ve grown up after the adoption of the ADA, there’s an expectation that disability will be properly accommodated and that inclusion is to be expected.

That’s a sea change from my childhood, which took place pre- ADA. People in my generation had to fight to get into the room. I had a professor in graduate school tell me that I shouldn’t be in his class, owing to my blindness. That discrimination might happen today in some places, but I think it’s mostly a thing of the past. Society is more engaging and accepting of disability in general and of the disabled in particular. There’s still much work to be done, but a lot has been accomplished.

You’ve alluded to examples of the positive effects of the ADA for the general population. Can you expand on that idea? 

Many people are unaware that some of the technologies they use daily are the products of disability design work. For instance, Siri and Alexa come out of work by Ray Kurzweil in the 1970s and 1980s. He invented talking optical character recognition systems for the blind.

The Kurzweil Machine was originally as big as a washing machine, and it had a copying machine glass top. You’d lay a printed book on the plate, and it would scan and read the pages aloud. That technology became the foundation for all kinds of contemporary talking devices. It’s also the case that once Apple decided to make every one of its products accessible for the blind, they found numerous ways to use text-to-speech to benefit every customer.

What improvements to the ADA and the integration of disabled persons into society can we look forward to in the next 30 years?

We desperately need to see new forms of pedagogy based on the understanding that in fact no two persons actually learn in precisely the same way. Work being done now to accommodate neurodiverse students or folks who are blind or deaf will likely lead to better integrated and inclusive forms of teaching and digitization.

If you were made ADA czar for a new presidential administration, what recommendations or actions would you take in your first 100 days?

I would tackle the disability-unemployment problem. Even 30 years after the passage of the ADA, the unemployment rates for the disabled remain terribly high. A figure that’s routinely accepted is that 70% of the disabled who are of working age remain unemployed in the United States. This can be changed with real incentives to small businesses and larger companies to hire the disabled. This solution is feasible, and it would get people off of Social Security disability and into the workforce. The long-term benefits would be remarkable.

How would you characterize BBI’s ADA-related work to those unfamiliar with your mission and projects?

BBI is named for Burton Blatt, a foundational scholar and activist who pioneered the field of disability studies here at Syracuse University. Dr. Blatt helped to revolutionize how we think
about disability and helped us understand that disability is not what it seems.

One way to think about this perspective is that just as we understand people are not defined by gender or race, Burton Blatt showed us that the disabled body and our attitudes toward it are merely societal ideas and have nothing to do with the disability itself. Today, BBI works globally to promote inclusion and opportunity for the disabled by breaking down such barriers.

How is BBI helping to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the ADA?

Even as we speak I am working with the US Department of State to create a virtual poetry reading featuring some of our nation’s leading poets—with and without disabilities—to celebrate the cultural dimensions of disability art and civil rights. BBI is also planning future events that we hope will occur on the University campus once we’re able to convene in person again.