Poster #112 - Disability and Work Outcomes in the Legal Profession Following the COVID-19 Pandemic

• In Event: Friday Poster Reception

Abstract

Background: Despite the COVID-19 pandemic accelerating telework adoption across professions, little evidence exists on whether the resulting flexibility gains influenced work outcomes differently for lawyers with disabilities. The legal profession offers a unique and understudied setting where high professional demands, varied organizational structures, and income stratification make it an important context for understanding which workers remain disadvantaged even under flexible conditions. Purpose: This study examines whether disability status is associated with differential changes in work outcomes since the onset of COVID-19 among licensed U.S. attorneys, and whether telework access, remote work feasibility, and perceived negative pandemic impact explain observed disparities.Data: Data come from wave two of a national survey of licensed attorneys conducted by the American Bar Association. The analytic sample includes 511 respondents with complete data on key study variables. Outcomes capture self-reported changes relative to pre-COVID (March 2020) across six domains: work-hour flexibility, job security, productivity, job satisfaction, hours worked, and client billable hours. Disability status, the primary independent variable, was measured using the Washington Group Short Set (WG-SS). Methods: Stepwise multinomial logistic regression models were estimated for each outcome, measured as a categorical response (decreased, unchanged, or increased relative to pre-COVID) with the reference category set to unchanged. Models progress sequentially from unadjusted to fully adjusted, adding demographic controls, current telework status, telework feasibility, and perceived negative COVID impact. Average marginal effects are estimated to characterize probability-scale associations across all predictors. Results: Lawyers with disabilities were significantly more likely to report increased workplace flexibility (53.0% vs. 37.7%, p=0.004) but also higher rates of decreased work hours (25.4% vs. 17.7%, p=0.031) and decreased client billable hours (34.4% vs. 20.9%, p=0.010). In regression models, disability was consistently associated with higher likelihood of reporting increased flexibility (fully adjusted RRR=1.75, p<0.01) and decreased client billable hours (fully adjusted RRR=1.94, p<0.05) across all specifications. Associations between disability and decreased productivity and work hours attenuated after adjusting for negative COVID impact, a variable on which lawyers with disabilities differed substantially from their non-disabled counterparts (52.6% vs. 37.9%, p=0.001). Telework access explained little of the disability gap across outcomes. Conclusion: Findings reveal that lawyers with disabilities gained flexibility during the pandemic yet experienced persistent disadvantages in billable output. Telework alone did not close these gaps. Higher rates of pandemic-related disruption among lawyers with disabilities appear to partially drive observed disparities. These findings carry implications for bar associations, law firms, and state workplace accommodation policy, and suggest that flexibility without broader structural support is insufficient to achieve equitable outcomes for attorneys with disabilities.

Authors

• Erblin Shehu, Syracuse University
  Presenting Author

• Fitore Hyseni, Syracuse University
  Non-Presenting Co-Author