10/8/14

Just in time to celebrate its 10th anniversary, the State Bar of Michigan Disabilities Project Newsletter has undergone a redesign. The revamped electronic newsletter will showcase more useful, to-the-point short stories that link to reports, forms and resources to more information on each topic.

In November of 2004 the first disabilities newsletter, "Deaf and the Hard of Hearing," was distributed to Michigan attorneys and others interested in disabilities issues. It was intended to be the first in a year-long quarterly series funded in part by a grant from the Newman Foundation.

"The formation of the Disabilities Work Group of the EAI was inspired by its counterpart group and section of the report of the Open Justice Commission founded by then Justice Marilyn Kelly and Judge Harold Hood in the late 1990s," said Kay Felt, chair of the Disabilities Work Group. "The Work Group quickly learned that the lawyers who were asking the most questions and benefiting the most were lawyers who unexpectedly discovered that a client was a person with a disability. It was thought that creating an online resource of the most commonly asked questions and answers could be useful to such lawyers, and might last for a year or so. Now ten years later the Work Group has barely missed a quarter and the newsletters remain on-line for use by lawyers and their clients. All of the work has been done by volunteer members of the bar."

Because of the dedication of the volunteer members of the SBM Disabilities Workgroup, the newsletter has continued on a quarterly basis since its launch.

Read the redesigned newsletter.

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