Power, disclosure and neurodiversity in legal education and entry to the legal profession: some reflections

This reflection considers the power dynamics that shape how neurodiversity is recognised, disclosed and managed in legal education and during entry to the legal profession. Rather than offering a comprehensive empirical account, I use the piece to reflect on a question that has increasingly troubled me as a legal educator: when we describe our institutions as inclusive, how much of that inclusion still depends upon the individual student making themselves legible to us? Drawing on critical disability scholarship, Foucauldian ideas of power and knowledge, and developments in legal education, I argue that disclosure-based systems can place a disproportionate burden on neurodivergent students to identify, evidence and explain their difference before support becomes available. I consider non-disclosure and non-diagnosis, the way universities communicate support, and the continuities between legal education and professional recruitment. My central reflection is that inclusion cannot depend solely upon ever more efficient processes for granting individual adjustments. Legal educators should also ask what features of our ordinary teaching, assessment and professional expectations create the need for disclosure in the first place. The piece therefore argues for a shift from reactive accommodation towards more anticipatory and structurally inclusive approaches, while recognising that individual adjustments will remain important.