Welcome back

After a hiatus of almost two years, we are pleased to announce that Deaf Lawyers UK and Deaf Blawg are fully operational once again.  In particular, we are delighted that we have been able to salvage all the posts from Deaf Blawg from 2004 onwards.

A great deal has happened since 2010.   We will be posting in due course about some of the changes to the UK legal landscape and the impact of austerity measures by the current Coalition Government on Deaf people.

By way of a reminder, the aim of this blawg is to provide a forum whereby Deaf lawyers, primarily those who reside in the UK (England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales), can muse on and discuss issues of a legal nature.

Many of you will have noticed that the web is dominated by Americanised groups of Deaf lawyers, and while we appreciate their feedback and support, back in 2004 we felt it was time that Deaf lawyers in the UK had a place where they should air their views and be confident that they will be considered from a British point of view.  This viewpoint remains, and even now, 8 years later, the numbers of Deaf lawyers in the UK are still small.

As the numbers of Deaf lawyers in the UK are so small, we are proposing to allow some international Deaf lawyers to post to this blawg. However, this may be reviewed in the future when we have established the policies of Deaf Lawyers UK and determined how these international Deaf lawyers will be allowed to retain their membership. For now, these will be called “associate members”.

If you are Deaf and want to be a lawyer or be otherwise involved in the legal profession, please contact us, and we’ll be happy to give you information about joining Deaf Lawyers UK and be allowed to post on this blawg.

Tribunal advocacy

This post was originally featured on North of the Stupid Line.

Right, we know there are not many Deaf lawyers in the UK.

We know that there are even fewer Deaf lawyers undertaking advocacy in tribunals and court.

I’m one of them. As an employment solicitor, I undertake advocacy in the Employment Tribunal on a regular basis.

Now, bear in mind that I’m profoundly Deaf and my first language is English as opposed to say BSL. I am a fluent BSL user, equally comfortable with spoken English. However, I’d be the first to admit that I do not have perfect speech; I’ve never actually *heard* a word so go figure. My voice is rather high pitched, and I tend to trip over my words from time to time or mulch all the words into one big mush as I don’t allow time to elocute-each-word-fully.

A weird byproduct of my “imperfect” speech is that some people understand me, and some don’t. I find I’m sometimes able to identify who falls into these categories: females in the former, and males in the latter; individuals who know how to LISTEN and those who don’t.

So, I undertake tribunal advocacy with imperfect speech. I hear you say: “that’s easy! Just use BSL!”. Well, yes, I could, but that would mean translating complex legal principles etc. into BSL and then hoping, just hoping, that the interpreter will be able to grasp the legal principle as well as the point I’m making, and voice over that in a way that is appropriate for such a situation i.e. formal language with legalese thrown in.

Are there actually any interpreters out there able to do this for me? And can they go to each tribunal regardless of location within England and Wales to do exactly that? I doubt it.

So, therein lies the problem. How does one solve it? Answers on a postcard please.

New design

We are pleased to announce that Deaf Lawyers UK and the Deaf Blawg have been relaunched with a new design.

Since its inception in 2004, DLUK now has ten members, but we are acutely aware that the information provided on the About Us page is now out of date. We are currently in the process of contacting all our members in order to obtain an update on their lives, and will publish an update in due course.

In the meantime, we anticipate that quite a number of Deaf people are now either studying law, thinking about it, or are actually practising law. If this is one of you, please join us! We would like to see an increase in the number of DLUK members, and get a support network in place.

Some of the things to look forward over the coming months are:

  • An discussion email group;
  • An online forum;
  • A mentoring programme; and
  • Information on how Deaf people can obtain legal advice.

We hope you will find DLUK a useful resource once again.