If I were starting out in the legal profession today, with the disabilities I have now, would I still have had a successful career?
As she stands down from leading Suffolk Law Centre, discrimination solicitor Audrey Ludwig reflects on whether things have got better for disabled employees.
I am a 58-year-old solicitor and director of legal services at Suffolk Law Centre, a charity that I campaigned for and led since our launch in 2018.
I am also disabled: I am partially deaf, have depression and anxiety, moderate asthma and eczema. This means I can only manage working three days a week, need reasonable adjustments in meetings or court hearings and from time to time I have to take periods off work, so my employer and the courts have to be flexible with me.
I’m also a pretty average solicitor, by which I mean good but not extraordinary. I am good enough, as are many, many others without disabilities who have successful careers.
My great luck is that my disabilities became most debilitating mid-career. By then, I had skills, experience, a record as a specialist equality and employment lawyer and founder of Suffolk Law Centre. Would I have succeeded if I had these or comparable conditions when starting out?
For many disabled people, starting a career and then sustaining it, to gain that knowledge and record, comes with huge barriers. The statistics on disabled people entering and thriving in the workplace are poor.
In 2017, the Work and Pensions Committee reported that employers were unsure of their Equality Act 2010 duties, unwilling to make adjustments for disabled employees and held discriminatory views about their capabilities.1
The Buckland Review of Autism and Employment, launched in April 2023, found that autistic people faced the largest pay gap of all disability groups, receiving a third less than non-disabled people on average.2 Autistic graduates were twice as likely to be unemployed after 15 months as non-disabled graduates. They were most likely to be overqualified for the job they had, most likely to be on zero-hours contracts and least likely to be in a permanent role.
There are major problems with Access to Work (the publicly funded grant scheme to enabled disabled people to work) including long delays,3 which cause particular problems for disabled people reliant on interpreters or personal assistants.4
Most horrifying of all, in 2016 it was reported that up to 48,000 disabled people per year were being ‘managed out’ of their jobs in the UK.5 In my county, Suffolk, a similar proportion today could equate to as many as 558 people in a year.
Legally Disabled?, a research project into the experiences of disabled people working in the legal profession (for which I was an interviewee), reported that 60 per cent of the solicitors and paralegals interviewed had experienced ill-treatment in the workplace, with 80 per cent believing it was related to disability; 45 per cent of disabled barristers interviewed reported ill-treatment, with 71 per cent of those believing this was related to disability.6
Last year, I gave evidence to the House of Lords Public Services Committee. It has now published Think Work First: the transition from education to work for young disabled people. 1st report of session 2024–25 (HL Paper 12, 15 October 2024), which details the barriers and offers 60 conclusions and recommendations.
As a discrimination lawyer, I am fully versed in legal steps that disabled people can take when encountering unlawful disability discrimination and harassment. At Suffolk Law Centre, which holds a legal aid contract in discrimination, nearly half our discrimination clients are disabled. For example, we have acted for an autistic client discriminated against at a Subway franchise because of his autism7 and for a DWP apprentice forced out due to chronic cluster headaches.8
Much unlawful discrimination is unintentional and due to poor, ‘one size fits all’ policies and inadequate training of managers. Many do not understand the duty to make reasonable adjustments tailored specifically for each disabled person. Many do not think about changes to workplace policies or practices as reasonable adjustments. For example, the GOV.UK page on flexible working does not even mention the duty to make reasonable adjustments for disabled people.
It’s no surprise, then, that we have had several clients who have made disability-related requests to work flexibly who were treated as if they were making standard flexible working requests, which have different criteria. Such clients are often turned down and then come to us to take legal action to enable them to secure the flexible working arrangement they need to stay in work.
While our primary activity is helping victims challenge unlawful discrimination, we also believe in prevention through awareness-raising and education. We have been funded by The Baring Foundation to pilot a Disability at Work Hub to identify opportunities to use the law to help achieve social change for disabled people.
One of the first initiatives, in partnership with DAWN (Disability Advice & Welfare Network), is an Autism Education Leavers Passport, which includes an autism-focused guide to rights under the Equality Act.
So, back to my original question. Would young me with my current disabilities have prospered in my legal career? Honestly, I don’t know. But I am glad there are now many more people championing people like older me.
Published by Legal Action Group, 11 October 2024
- Disability employment gap. Seventh report of session 2016–17, HC 56, 3 February 2017. ↩︎
- The Buckland Review of Autism Employment: report and recommendations, Department for Work and Pensions, February 2024. ↩︎
- John Pring, ‘Access to Work in crisis as figures show “massive” waiting-list’, Disability News Service, 12 May 2022. ↩︎
- Liam O’Dell, ‘All work, no pay? Interpreters and deaf professionals face chaos due to delayed Access to Work payments’, The Limping Chicken, 22 September 2021. ↩︎
- ‘Ahead of the arc’ – a contribution to halving the disability employment gap, All-Party Parliamentary Group on Disability, 7 December 2016. See also Dr Sarabajaya Kumar and Dr Colin Provost, Ableism and the labour market, Association of Disabled Professionals, June 2022. ↩︎
- Legally Disabled? The career experiences of disabled people working in the legal profession, Legally Disabled?/Cardiff Business School, 24 January 2024. ↩︎
- ‘Tribunal finds Bury Subway franchise discriminated against worker with autism’, Suffolk News, 26 December 2016. The project and the case straddled two organisations. Suffolk Law Centre’s origins lay in the Ipswich and Suffolk Council for Racial Equality’s legal work since 2013, but it subsequently became an independent charity, officially launching in 2018. ↩︎
- Amelia Hill, ‘DWP acted “perversely” in sacking of disabled woman, judge finds’, Guardian, 21 January 2019. ↩︎