Removing barriers to the legal profession for lawyers with disabilities: 'he assumed I could not be a lawyer because I was in a wheelchair'.

George Richards was sitting behind a podium in a courtroom when the judge admonished: "Stand up when you are addressing this court."

Rolling his wheelchair out from behind the podium, Richards said, "Judge, I would love to."

Richards is chief assistant statewide prosecutor in Ft. Myers, handling complex multi-jurisdictional felonies and supervising wiretaps, three attorneys, a financial analyst, and administrative assistant.

He joined several other lawyers with disabilities who shared their experiences and recommendations during The Florida Bar Annual Convention CLE symposium, "Removing Barriers to the Legal Profession for Lawyers with Disabilities," co-sponsored by the Equal Opportunities Law Section and the Florida Disability-Diversity Lawyers' Initiative that is addressing access issues involving law schools, bar exams, employment, courthouses, communities, and participation in Bar activities.

Recently, Richards was in bankruptcy court, covering a matter for the attorney general's office, and another attorney asked him who his lawyer was.

"He assumed I could not be a lawyer because I was in a wheelchair," Richards said.

Actually, if not for a spinal cord injury playing rugby in 1984, Richards likely would never have become a lawyer. Before his injury, he was a high-school dropout who became a mechanic working on heavy construction equipment, from a blue-collar, coal-mining background in England, who had moved to Miami.

Living in subsidized housing in Miami, Richards said, "I realized if I didn't find some form of employment, I was going to be stuck in that pretty bad neighborhood for the rest of my life. That was a real incentive to find a job."

He gave three reasons why Florida's lawyers should care about helping lawyers with disabilities overcome obstacles:

* "Because it's the law, and as lawyers, we are supposed to follow the law."

* "It makes financial sense. You can either have people like myself work and support themselves and pay taxes, or you can support us, and we can live on welfare."

* "This could happen to anybody in this room," Richard said, listing disabilities because of advancing age, illness, or injury.

"I never thought I could become disabled until that day when it happened, and there was no going back."

Considered a major step forward by many, the Bar presented this first CLE seminar about lawyers with disabilities.

"To see a piece of the program of The Florida Bar convention dedicated to this topic to educate and increase awareness and visibility is something I never would have seen 31 years ago," said James Kracht, a blind lawyer from Miami, who is an assistant county attorney supervising nine lawyers.

Kracht, a member of the initiative, sat in the audience taking notes on a PDA, a personal data assistant in Braille, and said: "It's exciting and gives Us all new challenges and new opportunities as we set out to really educate and get the message out and...