Danielle Gleicher-Bates

Embrace and celebrate who you are; your strengths and challenges make you you. Surround yourself with people who believe in you and share your values, and you will thrive. Don’t be afraid to forge your own path and don’t compare your journey to anyone else’s – it’s yours and yours alone.

My work has raised awareness of neurodiversity and related issues in the legal sector and justice system. In particular, my work has highlighted the strengths and challenged the deficit focus of neurodivergence, for example through a campaign celebrating the abilities of neurodivergent individuals in the legal sector. The ADHD in Custody Guide has raised awareness of ADHDers’ legal rights and potential needs in police custody. Neurodivergent law students and legal professionals’ voices have been amplified by neurodiversikey’s surveys, forming the beginnings of an evidence base which I hope will be used to bring about long term change across legal education, training, and practice.

I aspire to encourage and enable others to foster and support neuroinclusivity and neurodiversity throughout the legal sector and justice system. I hope to achieve this primarily through education and training, but also other means such as creating opportunities to level the playing field for neurodivergent people, building an evidence base to measure progress, and collaborating with other organisations and members of the neurodivergent community. My ultimate goal is for a legal sector and justice system where neurodivergent people are respected, understood, and are on an equal footing, irrespective of their role or position in society.

As an ADHDer, I rarely switch off and it’s like having my own inbuilt entertainment. But to slow down, I enjoy spending time outdoors in nature.

I enjoy helping others and making a positive difference, especially if it involves helping neurodivergent people succeed.

Dogs

If I could, I would rebuild society to include neurodivergent/disabled people as the baseline rather than in hindsight through adjustments.

In wider society, neurodivergent (and other disabled) people continue to be an afterthought and subjected to stigma and ableism, with scant resources available to enable our equal participation in society. In the legal sector, access to, retainment and progression in legal careers continue to pose significant barriers to neurodivergent/disabled people. The legal profession should be representative of the people it serves; an insufficiently diverse profession is therefore a threat to access to justice. Meanwhile, the justice system is inadequately set up to serve the needs of neurodivergent/disabled people. The lack of understanding of neurodivergence in particular not only poses barriers to participation but also risks injustice. Neurodivergent people are overrepresented throughout the criminal justice system and are being let down in other areas of law too.