Research Symposium

BIO

Alyssa Leon is a first-year Honors student and Presidential Scholar pursuing a Bachelors of Science in Political Science and Bachelors of Arts in History, with minors in Law and Philosophy and General Business. She is from Hialeah, Florida, and is passionate about practicing law, especially in intellectual property, business, and constitutional law, while also exploring the possibility of legal academia.

Her current research focuses on legal studies, and she is involved with the Undergraduate Law Review as an editor for a short-form article on trademark law. This year, Alyssa joined the Undergraduate Research Symposium program through the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program, building on her high school experience conducting independent civic education research based in her home county, Miami-Dade, for her Advanced Placement Capstone project, which earned her a Capstone diploma.

Alyssa is driven by a desire to use the law to support innovation, creativity, and policy reform while addressing society’s needs and keeping people informed. She looks forward to continuing to explore legal research and contributing to meaningful scholarship throughout her undergraduate career.

The Deference Dilemma: Disability Accommodations in Law Schools

Abstract

This project investigates the administrative and pedagogical structures of academic accommodations within American legal education, specifically examining the alignment between centralized university models and the professional demands of the legal industry. Employing an empirical methodology, the research utilizes a 16-question survey distributed to accommodations administrators at all ABA-accredited law schools to evaluate institutional decision-making authority, the prevalence of professional skill-building interventions, and administrator concern levels regarding current accommodation frameworks. Preliminary data from 73 institutions indicates a significant trend toward administrative centralization; almost half of surveyed law schools defer both eligibility and scope determinations to non-law university units. The survey results further document institutional concern regarding a potential “licensing cliff,” identified through the perceived disparity between classroom accommodations and the rigid standards of state bar examinations. Furthermore, the data evidences a notable absence of integrated executive functioning or resilience training across the sampled schools. Ultimately, this survey identifies systemic trends in the administration of academic accommodations at law schools, providing a quantitative baseline for analyzing the relationship between institutional structure and the perceived professional readiness of accommodated law students.

Keywords: Law, Law Schools, Disability, Accommodations