What happens next?
There are a number of key stages to the development of the research, all of which will happen in equal partnership (co-production) with disabled legal professionals.
The project has established a Research Reference Group consisting of only disabled legal professionals and the two key researchers. This group supports the researchers with designing and delivering the research. Data has been collected through a number of focus groups and we will shortly begin one to one interviews. When analysis of the interviews is complete we will distribute a large-scale survey. At all stages, the aim is for disabled people to lead the way.
The roles of key partners and stakeholders is also important. These include the Lawyers for Disability Division, the Law Society, Law Care, the Bar Council, law firms and others who we have been advised to seek contact with.
Focus Groups [Complete]: these were run across England and Wales in co-operation with the LDD, and helped us to gain a better insight into the issues that you have faced throughout your career. The key findings helped us to shape our research questions so we can explore these issues in greater depth.
Interview stage [Current]: Following ethics approval, we will shortly seek out one-to-one interviews, face-to-face, on the phone or by Skype, depending on what suits you best. All interviews are confidential and no personal details or identifiers will be used or passed on.
Large-scale survey [Third stage]: After the interview stage we will analyse the information and key themes to create a survey. This will be distributed to as many people as possible, to find out how common some of the themes are across the legal profession. This will give us hard numerical data to complement the qualitative data to be gathered from interviews.
How you can participate
You can put yourself forward to be interviewed. The final opportunity to let us know about your experiences will come from the survey.
When the research is complete, academic and policy papers, blog posts and articles will be written to publish the findings and recommendations for a range of audiences. This will be during 2019.
Encourage interest!
It will be extremely helpful to us if you can help to raise awareness of the project with colleagues and encourage people to look at our website for information on www.legallydisabled.com
Please get in touch if you have any queries or to let us know if you would like us to keep you informed of project development.
info@legallydisabled.com