Part 3 of the Nontraditional Students series
Welcome to the Legal Learning Podcast. I’m your host Jolene and with the Legal Learning Center I help pre-law students and law students with their legal journey. Today’s guest is Sarah Semyetzky, founder of Ember Academic Services. In a minute you’ll hear all about the amazing services her company provides. But first a word from our sponsor. Financially Free Aspiring Attorneys is a course with over $300,000 money saving tips. If you want to go to law school but don’t want to pay for it this course is right for you, visit www.legallearningcenter.com/financially-free for more information.
00:00 S1: My name is Sarah, I’m the owner of Ember Academic Services. My business is an academic consulting and tutoring, full-service business actually, which although I cater all students specializes in those with learning differences, learning disabilities, processing disorders is on the spectrum, anxiety disorders. I’ve worked with a whole range of students, and I help any non-traditional student who may face challenges at the more traditional students I may not face. I know that there are lots of consulting and tutoring services out there already, but I found that myself as a person with disabilities, there often wasn’t so much out there for me that really addressed my needs, so once I became more of an expert, I got through these hurdles myself, overcame them and succeed in graduate school and beyond, I decided to use my expertise to help others.
00:50 S2: That Is fabulous. Okay. So you mentioned anxiety, I think ADHD. Do you also help with… I can’t remember if you said this. Dyslexia,
00:59 S1: I Do. I have actually currently, I never mean everything’s anonymous, but actually I currently tutor one.
01:06 S2: Do you also help… I know this is more math related, but… Do you help with Dyscalculia
S1: I haven’t, but I do have the ability to do so.
S2: Okay, is your primary focus for law school and LSAT or is it more broad?
01:18 S1: I’d say it’s graduate school in general, so I do college level tutoring because before you get to graduate school, you have to do well in undergrad as well, so getting them over that hump. But especially when it comes to students and learning disabilities, maybe we need a little more help than that, and also my understanding is now with everything being shut down, students may not have access to these services and a lot of things are getting impeded that way.
01:57 S2: Especially with things being online. I’m sure that impacts people’s… Certain people’s disabilities even more as well.
02:04 S1: Absolutely. Especially if you’re not well-trained and well-versed in handling these things and knowing how to cater to these different learning styles, and you may not be prepared to adapt, there’s a big difference between tutoring or teaching someone online and in person, and you really have to be conscientious about what they’re hearing, differences are to be able to adapt an online learning session to those needs. I get a lot of feedback from students that have disabilities that with previous tutors that they’ve done work with online, they found that they weren’t really able to adapt it very well, and I can see this is a real challenge for sure.
02:38 S2: Yeah, now what type of accommodations can someone get on the LSAT?
02:43 S1: Your typical testing accommodation is probably the most common is extra time, you have 50%, you have a 100%, and then… I’m not sure if you’re actually allowed more than that, but I know there’s 100% depending on your needs, you also have the ability… it currently isn’t applicable because it’s LSAT flex, which means people are doing testing remotely procured from their homes, but when you were in a testing center, you had the option for a reduced or a private distraction-free test setting, you also have various assistive devices available and read in large text, things like that. And you have breaks in between sections there’s a potential accommodation of having stop-start break where you can stop mid-section and start again if necessary, and standing podium, although they actually require that you bring it with you, so you see have to bring your own podium or standing desk to a testing center.
03:56 S1: And as somebody who uses a standing desk at home, I have no idea how you’re supposed to do that, but it is what it is.
04:02 S2: That does sound odd, but I guess at least it’s an option.
S1: My guess is that because we have testing centers all over the world, they have a hard time seeing that any given testing facility is going to have the standing desk, I have no idea how that actually plays out. I did the LSAT flex when I took it, so I didn’t have that problem.
S2: Do you know what accommodations you can get for your law school finals… I mean exams. During law school?
04:35 S1: Yeah, so for that, we’re getting into accommodations that you could get in law school, which really is the same as what you can get in any university or graduate program, which again, you have things like extra private test setting, or if some universities have two different types of distraction-reduced setting, they have reduced distraction settings, which are rooms with fewer students, you’re not in the classroom with your peers, but you’re still in a room with other students, which doesn’t make a lot of sense if you have a disability, that makes taking a test in the same room with your peers, difficult, I don’t see how doing it with 10 people and not 50 people is going to be particularly helpful. But it’s one that I think they like to use, because if they can get you to take that instead of private setting, using up fewer resources and then you have a private test setting, which actually puts you in your own private room, you potentially have a white noise machine, you have access to ear plugs and all of that, and of course, you have all sort of system technology available, some people get use of calculators on tests or uses computer on tests that require hand writing, such as essays, that sort of thing.
05:53 S2: How are you able to help students with the rest of their application process so they can get into law school besides the LSAT, there’s so many other pieces to applying.
06:03 S1: So in addition to taking the LSAT, ensuring that you have the accommodations on the LSAT that you need, which luckily has gotten better over time when you’re getting into law school, all these universities technically offer disability departments and accommodations because they’re receiving federal funding, so they have to agree to do so in exchange for that federal funding to meet ADA, American with Disabilities Act requirements, however, some of them technically provide the services, but essentially do the bare minimum, and sometimes that’s because they’re simply… They wanna do their best, but they’re under-staffed.. I went to a transfer university in undergrad, they only have two people in their entire academic services office, two people, but there really wasn’t anything they could do… They were really trying their best or they truly didn’t have the resources, then there are departments that have the staff or they have the funding and they have the money to… And they have the staff that they’re not well trained or they’re not qualified or they could have but definitely they’re choosing not to, but the end all is that they just have an antagonist, attitude towards these students, they’re doing this because they’re required to…
07:05 S1: But the people running the place don’t view their job as a meaningful one, where they are there to help a deserving student population be on an equal playing field with their peers, which is what the law requires that you have the same opportunities as your peers, they’re not interested in that, are there to do a job through administrators that have been given a salary, and if they’re showing up, but they’re not really interested in the job and this problem in helping you succeed, and they make that clear every step of the way, I experienced that in undergrad, then there are departments that are the opposite, you can tell that these people come in every day thinking, How can I help my students, they’re constantly doing research and collaborating with other departments and doing everything they can to stay up-to-date on the technology, and those techniques. So that they can do the best to help you. And one of the ways that I tell students, you can really tell the difference is when you’re picking a school, if you are a student who need academic services, you need to be speaking to the departments before you put down your deposit to ensure that you are really checking these people out, demand a sit down.
08:09 S1: Demand, a sit down with somebody who’s in charge or the person who will be working with you, the actual coordinator, not just some random person in the office, and the way they approach these services tells you lot… The one way that departments may approach it would be, Here’s what we do, yes, we offer disability services, you have to send us all this documentation, we’re not required to provide anything until you do, we have strict rules, and it’s basically them wagging their finger at you and giving you a legal disclaimer about everything we don’t have to do to help you, and that’s how they approach the conversation from step one, that’s a big red flag, then there are departments where you call them up and they say, Send in your documentation, right in touch with the coordinator, you get in touch with that coordinator and they say, How can I help you, what’s worked from in the past, what hasn’t… Tell me what’s going on so I can do my very best. To assist you, ’cause I wanna help you succeed. That’s the conversation you wanna be on, and as I said, you should be doing this before you even actually start school, so you don’t necessarily wanna send your documentation at that point, but I would at least wanna have a discussion with a person where I would ask them How do you approach this? What’s the process? And I wanna hear the words, I want to do my best to help.
09:19 S1: If I don’t hear that come out of their mouth, I’m looking somewhere else, especially if it started a legal disclaimer of, this is everything you have to do, and unless you do it, we don’t have to do anything, ’cause that says to me that they’re just trying to get out of doing their job rather than trying to assist me, also getting these documents in order is extremely expensive, costs thousands of dollars, it’s typically not provided by insurance, so some disability departments demand that you have a full neuro evals, depending on what your needs are. Meaning if what you have, is it an ADHD diagnosis and then a medical problem, they’ll just require that from your psychiatrist or your doctor, some are stricter and others, because they realize you don’t need to spend $5000 on neuros where it’s not relevant to… And they also realize the burdens there.
10:06 S2: So is there a specific department at the undergrads and then at the law schools that they should be looking for…
10:12 S1: Well, it totally depends on the school, and that’s the other thing that makes it tricky. Some schools have one disability department that serves everything and everyone, and depending on the university that maybe that they have one Disability Department, but then it’s sectioned up into different sections. It may be that they have one that has three people in it, and they’re responsible for everything. You really have to look into it. On the other hand, there are some schools that have separate departments for separate schools, just arts and sciences, graduate, undergraduate. There’s such a wide range of… I’ve seen so many variations of this, what matters is that the people who are there to help you are coordinating things properly, they have a system that works, and that they’re available to you and that they have the training, education or experience necessary to do so. So you want people whose job it is to come in every day and help you, not somebody who’s overburdened, they’re in some other department like financial services or admission, if they’ve got other things going on, you might not be there to help you that day with that problem, and these problems can be really time-sensitive, for example, you have an accommodation of being able to record your classes, and this is a very common accommodation actually, and the professor decides he doesn’t like that. He’s very old school. He says, You know what, Sarah, I don’t want you recording my class, I feel really awkward about it and it makes me uncomfortable… Sorry to hear your concerns, but I have this for a disability, this has been approved by the Disability Services Department, so he’s now refusing to let you use an accommodation, I need to succeed. If class is in a day, I can’t get that disability coordinator on the phone and get her to resolve that in a timely matter, it means that that class, that’s what one or two hours material I know don’t have. These people really need to be available to you, and they need to be able to do things in a timely manner.
12:02 S2: Really scary. Do you ever hear things like the disability students are being given an advantage or too much…
12:10 S1: Absolutely, there’s a point of view, and this is kind of an indicator of a cultural issue, this would be a red flag for me if I was investigating the University as a potential place for me to go for my education would be attitudes by either a… Administrators be the Disability Department and see professors and sometimes combination of three, but they have an idea of… These are adantages being given. I was forbidden at one school that they may not approve recording of lectures, which again, is a very basic accommodation that I was told that they may not allow that, and if they did, they might require me to give back the recordings or to let them within a short time frame to ensure I didn’t have an advantage over other students, this is an interesting way to view things. If you imagine a field and you line everyone up, all the students and you tell them they’re gonna race, and you have a starting line, and we put all the neurotypical students or the students without disabilities, physical disabilities, also medical disabilities, and you put them on that starting line and then you take the disabled students…put them 100 yards back? Then you give me my accommodation of recorded lectures, great.
13:20 S1: I just moved up 50 steps, then you give me my accommodation of medical absence… Great. And ended up in other 25 steps. Let’s say you get me all the way to the starting line, well, guess what, we have one real problem, I have very Shearer auto-immune disease, so I have a flare up. Now everyone’s running. But I’m running a lot slower. It’s not because I’m not capable. Disability challenges, they’re usually unpredictable… They’re difficult to deal with, and the point is getting me to baseline with everyone else but it’s still not the same. Everything is still a little bit tougher. When people say, Well, it’s not fair. I say, Well, it’s not fair when people are born with disability. It doesn’t take away anything from other students giving somebody recording of the class, doesn’t take away your experience in the class. I would far prefer to not be disabled and not need any of this extra help, not have to spend all this time meeting with disability departments, not have to pay $1000 for a neuropsychiatric evals and spent hours and days and weeks and months in doctor’s offices, but everyone should be grateful for their advantages or disadvantage and maybe not worry so much about what the disabled students are getting, I’m not sure where they stem from, but there’s clearly this taboo about disability where people think they can shame others for it, there are clearly some feelings that are harbored by some groups, and they should spend more time talking to people like me, talking to people who have disabilities, who work with people who… Disability is gonna be trying to get to know better what challenges they face before they make assumptions about us getting advantages or anything of the sort. It’s just shocking to me that people get so crazy about this stuff, just take care of yourself. Plus, it’s really none of your business, but if you’re interested, a conversation… Don’t make assumptions.
S2: Yeah, now, what about students who maybe have kind of fumbled their way through high school and even college, and suddenly they’re kind of learning that have a disability, so they don’t really have all the tests, they don’t have all the proof or back up. What do they do?
15:30 S1: This is a problem. And it used to be a bigger problem than it is today. So LSAC were given a warning by the ADA because they were doing certain things that were hurting Americans with disabilities, I think were really discriminatory, they were flagging tests of accommodated students so that the admissions department of law schools could see who got accommodations, which is effectively pointing out disabled students and they are no longer doing that, one of the things they used to do is they would require you to show that you had received these accommodations either on previous tests but it’s no longer a hard requisite because the government recognized and made it very clear to LSAC that simply because somebody has not already have a diagnosis does not mean they have not been struggling with a disability. You can see this movement towards understanding that disability is… Aren’t a childhood affliction that disappear with the development of the adult… ADHD diagnosis. I;m not 100% sure whether the thought process was that you grew out of ADHD or what it was, but basically they didn’t have criteria to diagnose adults, so if you got to adulthood without an ADD diagnosis, you could not then be diagnosed.
16:40 S1: And that was a major issue. So you had 18-year-olds going to college, maybe came from backgrounds where either the parents were not aware that these issues were prevalent or they didn’t have the resources and didn’t find the resources, educational testing is very expensive, thousands of dollars. Now, there are resources you can go to get it done more affordably-universities, major universities often offer either free or sliding scale or significantly reduced cost neuropsychological testing services done by PhD students and under the supervision of a psychologists but they usually have long waitlist, so you have to plan ahead and parents may not know about this. Or there may be cultural differences where they don’t see the signs and symptoms and say, This is autism, this is a learning disability, they see this is a behavioral problem, and they treat it as such, and those students can come out with a lot of shame and doubt, and not be as open to reaching out for help, but if they see that they’re having issues, I would highly encourage anyone who suspects that they have these issues to not be ashamed, not feel like this is a taboo.
17:45 S1: I was in middle school when I was first diagnosed with my first issue, which was ADHD and auditory processing issues, and I also have medical disabilities an auto-immune disease in allerdale syndrome, which is a connection tissue disorder, chronic joint pain. I was in middle school, my teacher said I was lazy, and this was after we brought in the neuro-psyche eval. We also figured out later is I was probably even at that point developing hearing loss too, but at the time, there were clearly very strong sentiments being given to me that… That we’re saying, This is your fault. You don’t have a disability. You are just doing this. I think the keys there are, I know that you may have shame about these issues. Don’t. Reach out to people who can help you. People are there to help. People whose job it is to help typically, are there for a reason, these jobs don’t pay very well, so usually more often not they’re there for the right reasons, they wanna help you.
18:45 S2: And you mentioned physical disabilities, what type of accommodations do people with physical disabilities for the LSAT?
18:53 S1: So one of them, as I talked about, is the ability to use a podium or standing desk, although as I said, I have no idea how that’s practically implemented, if you have to bring your own podium, for me, it included breaks between tests because I needed to be able to stand up, stretch even potentially lie down, my understanding is you can potentially get accommodations include being to take medication and of course, stop-start breaks, which allow you to take medication, etcetera, and of course, extra time, that may not be a sole reason to get extra time, but it definitely supports extra time if your visibility includes issues with writing, fatigue, concentration. Medical conditions that involve chronic pain can have severe effects on cognition and even physical ability to sit, to stand wright. Physical is your hands, and that definitely plays in when you’re talking about accommodations, like extra time.
19:49 S2: I can’t even imagine. I know I used to go to the store and compare which pens flowed the best for my law school exams and for the bar exam, so I would have three, four pens that would flow so my arm, wouldn’t hurt so much. And I don’t have any disabilities. I can’t even imagine when you add on to that, so… Yeah, definitely
20:12 S1: Extra time, right. When you take the LSAT, it’s all in the computer now, even if it’s not the flex, there’s the writing exam, for example, the writing portion of the test, which is not scored, is always now from home and on the computer. Which is wonderful.
20:28 S2: I see that your services include helping people pick schools, the entire application process, can you go into a little bit more about what you do with that aspect?
S1: Also, as I said, when I investigate schools, this is a very intensive process because the Disability Department at the University of Florida is excellent, if anybody is considering them, their Disability Department is so supportive and so wonderful. I could not recommend them enough. That being said, in terms of other school, because the problem comes in, and I was talking to my disability coordinator about this, because there’s no list, there’s no centralized database that tells you what schools are going to be able to help you and this is also individualized, depends on your needs, but overall, if a department wants to be helpful and has resources to be helpful, you should judge them by how much they can help the most needy student, and I don’t mean… Needing a bad way when you talk to people about disability departments, it’s very hard to get good reviews from students ’cause you don’t know what they were using, and all those students just use a few basic things, they use extra time on tests. Maybe that’s it, maybe a computer on their test and a disability department that’s prepared to give them that consistently isn’t necessarily going to be able to help a student that needs approval for medical absences for issues during flare ups or wants to be able to record their classes visually, because they need to be able to see the teacher’s mouth move or private test rooms, they may have a separate testing center, but it may not have private rooms
22:16 S1: It’s not to meet the minimum it’s meant to really be helping all of the students to meet that baseline. That’s the standard I set for that. The way you have to investigate this is you have to have very serious conversations with people in charge, how I see it is you need to speak to number one, the person in charge of the Disability Department, because I need to get up from the courses now, what are your procedures… What is the staffing of your department, like what disability services you offer, what is… From day one, when a student is requested accommodation, what does the time frame look like, who reviews it, what are their qualifications? What is your rate of rejection for student requests for accommodation, people don’t spend thousands on documentation and put in all this work this effort… This time is money. So if you have a very high rate of rejection in terms of 50% of your students are getting the request rejected, I see a red flag in that. My point is, you need to sit down with the head of the department.
23:18 S1: Personally, I would get everything they say in writing, so do you know that you’re gonna need extra time on tests in a private test setting and ability record lectures, get it in writing that they offer these accommodations, find out that their system is adequate, find out that they have adequate staffing that they make the best effort to good turnaround times when you submit your documentation, that when you sit down with that person to discuss it, that the tone of the conversation is, How can I help you succeed as a student, not how can I get away for a minimum or we just approved some stuff, here you go, here’s some people go away. Before you submit your despit, there should be a sit down with a coordinator dedicated to you, who is the person you can call, who was your point of contact for the issues, that person should exist, and that person should have a background in Disability Services they should not just be some random contact with the law school who’s doing this as a side gig.
24:14 S1: But will they put in writing, are they transparent, they’re not willing to put on their website what they do, or send it to you in an email. That’s scary
24:22 S2: And really scary because law school in particular is just so intense, it’s so difficult. There’s no room for error. I mean, it’s all the curve, so you need to have, again, that level playing field as much as possible to start.
24:36 S1: Once you’re enrolled, you’re enrolled, if you get there, and it turns out they’re not really giving you what you need, you are up the creek… I’m sad to say, the thing to highlight here is there is a very unequal power distribution when you’re talking about disabled students needing these accommodations, so you need to ensure that the people who are in charge of this, who have all this power over your education, have your best interest in mind, you may have to turn down a higher ranked school because they are not prepared to provide you with the proper disability services, and you should be prepared to make that choice.
25:08 S2: Or you’re fighting for them all the time, when you should be focused on your studies… Yeah.
25:12 S1: I’ve been in that situation and the amount of time and the amount of energy, the amount of distress, the way it impacts you.
25:18 S2: Are you aware of any scholarships for students, ’cause I know sometimes with the disabilities, students don’t have the GPA that they feel like they should have, they put in this huge effort and they just get average grade, and so are there special scholarships that you’re aware of for these students.
25:36 S1: There are a few, I keep finding I’ve been doing a lot of work, spending a lot of hours tracking them down, and there are very few, they seem to disappear as often, or more often than they appear, they’re usually for very low numbers. One trend I’ve noticed that’s a bit discouraging, there are far more scholarships for being basically anything but disabled, which to me is a little strange because having a disability really does impact your ability to do things like have a job on top of school, or the types of jobs you can hold, and often there’s discrimination in the workplace, unfortunately, that really puts us at a greater need, every time I tell someone about this problem, they’re surprised there’s an assumption that… Of course, there’s plenty of scholarship money for us. There isn’t… My biggest suggestion, if you’re struggling with your GPA, bringing your LSAT up or your GRE, especially when it comes to law school.
26:40 S1: This LSAT, You can take it as many times as you need, I talked to admissions advisors who say it takes five or six scores before they even expect an explanation. So my suggestion is find a tutor like myself who has trained to work with people with disabilities, and not only that, but one of the services I offer is helping you put together what you need to submit to LSAC and writing any appeal or appeal letters or anything like that, I will fight on your behalf, I will write those letters for you as a specialty I have… I kind of develop an expertise in writing these types of letters, both for Disability Services or financially, these are all things I do to ensure that when we submit that letter, we’re using the right strategy, we are using the right argument to get you what you need, and what it comes to disability services with LSAC, it’s pretty straightforward, the ADA was pretty clear LSAC needed to change the policies, so they are now doing much better than they used to be, so in terms of my services, I ensure that you have all the documentation you need, that you’re filling out properly, I double-check everything because LSAC is looking for a thing that you didn’t dot properly, and there’s a portion that you have to write, so I can help you write that portion so that it sounds like what else I’ve wanted here and represent you properly in represent your needs, and also if you need help finding a neuropsychologist, I will help you get together everything you need.
28:09 S2: I just feel so relieved for other people because really there’s just so few resources out there, and usually we’re trying to use a random tutor or assistant to help us with this program and for the applications and for the accommodations. And not someone who actually knows what they’re doing and is trained in it and has experienced it, and so I just feel so much relief for the people who are gonna hear this and use it, I’m just so glad there’s someone like you out there.
28:39 S1: I appreciate that, thank you so much. Yeah, I plan to eventually introduce a document, a published paper to tell students these are the schools meeting their requirements and these ones are not. And that will also serve of course, as a reward for the schools that are doing a wonderful job, but also as incentive for schools that are not meeting their requirements.
29:05 S2: I think that one thing I’ve seen over the last, I don’t know, maybe 10, 20 years, is that we seem to find a group of people that we want to help, and so we raised them up, so we’ve done a lot with autism and with LGBTQ+. And so we keep raising… I’ve seen it with Disabilities a bit with the autism and so forth, I haven’t seen it as much with mental health, so I am hoping… But it’s coming up, and so I’m hoping to see a lot more with the disabilities, there’s so many… Just different groups of people that need help in so many different ways, and so it’s nice that you can cover a lot of dysgraphia and the ADHD and the autism … It’s great to see that you’ve really got a handle on this.
29:51 S1: Think the important thing here is I think some people see like This is zero, some game… Maybe in some ways it is. I’m not gonna get into those issues here, what I am gonna say is You lose nothing by those who need help, getting the help. Helping people who are disabled, It doesn’t hurt you to ensure we have the ability to become functional part of society. People often think that people use the word disabled and they’re looking to go on SSI on, get disability payments, but the reality is people with disabilities typically wanna work, they want to be functional parts of society, firstly, disability payments are terrible, you usually below the party line and who wants to be dependent on that. People like to be functional, people like to be useful.
30:34 S2: Yeah. Alright, Sarah, thank you so much for joining us today. If people wanna reach out to you, how can they do so
30:41 S1: You can reach out to me via my website, it’s called Ember, E-M-B-E-R, Academic Services.com. You can also reach me by email and my phone number, which are on that website, I also have a Facebook page Ember academic services. I also am doing this new series, I have a blog attached to the website, where you can anonymously or not anonymously, ask me a question about anything about these topics that you wanna know, and I will have the answer it on my blog, so feel free to give me a contact… That was fun.
31:24 S2: Thank you.
Before we get into my top take aways a quick word from our sponsor, Juno. If you need to take out student loans, check in with Juno first. Juno can often offer students lower interest rates than the federal government at no cost to the student and with cash back. Visit joinjuno.com/p/legallearningcenter for more information on how you can reduce your law loans.
Allright my top take aways form this chat with Sarah.
- Meet with the disability coordinator before you send a deposit. And get in writing that they can actually meet your specific accommodation needs. Not just general accommodations but your specific needs.
- Pay attention to not just what they say but how they say it. What’s their actual attitude when they’re talking to you about your needs.
- There are about 6 possible LSAT accommodations we talked about but there may be more so just keep these in mind in case you need them.
- Next one ember academic services can help you with LSAT tutoring, college course turtoring, applying to law school and GRE and so forth.
That’s it for this episode. Be sure to check in for our interview of next week with Sarah from CerebellumChef.com. Sarah will tell us what it’s like to blog while in law school. If you learned something today please like, comment, share, subscribe so this show is more visible and can help those who need it. Thanks.
If you want to hear more from nontraditional students, be sure to check out Episode 7 where I talk with an attorney who took more than 10 gap years. http://legallearningcenter.com/alex and Episode 8 where I talk with an attorney who was a mom while in law school http://legallearningcenter.com/tina
