It is important to remember that as attorneys, we wear many different hats. Sometimes we wear all the hats, stacked on top of each other, all at the same time. We need to remember all the hats we have and the roles we fill for our clients. First and foremost, we are advocates for the entire human standing before us requesting assistance. As much as attorneys try to compartmentalize their role as only to handle the “law stuff”, we represent humans who have complex needs. We see clients during some of the most challenging times of their lives, whether it is a divorce, an accident, unlawful discrimination, or some other serious dispute. It is unrealistic to think we are not serving as social worker, friend, and advocate as well as attorney.
This becomes even more important when working with individuals with disabilities. It can be easy to gloss over an individual’s unique needs in favor of resolving the matter quickly to get it off the case list to move on to the next 5 cases. Doing so risks alienating your client or depriving your client of meaningful participation in the process. We should be taking direction from our clients; if we do not ensure that our clients are meaningfully participating, we run the risk of making decisions for them. We need to break out of the mindset that we are only one thing performing only one function and expand our representation to the whole human.