Autism in Legal Operations: Untapped Talent and Practical Management

Law Firms and Legal Departments Are Missing an Advantage

As a Legal Project Manager handling high-volume operations, particularly for government agencies, I focus on efficiencies in work flow and improving compliance with legal and contractual requirements.  Finding the right people for teams where every detail of documents and steps counts is a challenge.

As a parent of an adult autistic daughter, Ingrid Weiss, I’ve seen firsthand the challenge even college educated and highly technically skilled neurodiverse people have finding employment that allows them to utilize their skills.  Fortunately, Ingrid was eventually hired through a Specialisterne initiative with IBM eight years ago.  IT has been the leading edge of providing technically challenging jobs for people on the autism spectrum.

Our law firm and affiliated title agency has benefitted from a hiring initiative I brought to our firm partnering with the Autsim Alliance of MI.  This article will make the case for law firms and corporate legal departments tapping into this underutilized talent pool that can provide an excellent fit for roles where a high level of precision is required.  This could be the operational advantage your firm is missing out on.  (Hey – I’m an MBA – I’m all about the business side of this).

What Autistic Professionals Bring to Legal Operations

In paralegal and legal processor roles, autistic staff at our firm have excelled.  Some concrete benefits I’ve witnessed include:

• Outstanding accuracy in legal document drafting – One characteristic of autism is often a high degree of focus in a narrow topic area. This is known as monotropism – an attentional style where focus flows deeply into fewer active channels at any one time.  Applying that intense focus to document preparation or review and editing of documents prepared by others is a great use of this super power.  On a team I managed, the autistic legal processor consistently outscored the rest of the team on document accuracy.  I then asked this staff member to QC the work of others.
• Comprehensive in-depth research – I’ve heard the ‘down the rabbit hole’ as a describer of that deep-dive capability in research. AI may provide a lot of data, but an autistic staff member may have superior ability identifying all the possible aspects of a legal research project to direct AI and then ferret out the good from the bad results.  One of my daughter’s IBM managers has found autistic staff having a natural inclination for AI. A lot of this research expertise comes from cross-disciplinary interest – love for other subjects can lead to finding unexpected connections between ideas at work.
• Consistent standard process adherence – Other than medical applications, I can’t think of a field where following the regulations and approved processes is more important than law. Autistic individuals thrive with routine and certainty of work flow.  For legal processes, autistic individuals can be a great fit – they are motivated to follow process and your firm benefits with the high degree of compliance.  They may also have leadership potential as SMEs roles explaining and training in process for others with the right training!
• Pattern recognition and problem solving – Autistic staff are likely to recognize when processes are getting off track, seeing patterns where things went wrong. I have a staff member who does a bang up job adding to process instructions where we need to better define scenarios that happen in the process and how to address them.  I can remember a time when this legal processor was the first on the team to recognize a pattern of faulty data coming from our client so we could escalate and get it fixed quickly. Listening to and advocating for their observations and suggestions is a great way to establish trust.

Easy, High-Impact Workplace Accommodations

Ingrid and I host a podcast where we discuss neurodiversity in the professional workplace – www.youtube.com/@TheCanaryPodcast.  Our goals is to make hiring and working with autistic and other neurodiverse individuals approachable and win-win for both managers and staff.  Some thoughts on easy accommodations are:

• Civility at work – For autistic employees, civility isn’t about comfort – it’s about access. Provide an environment with predictability, psychological safety, and clear feedback without humiliation.  Predictability can mean things like knowing which meetings they are required to attend and specific direction on dress code for the office.  Feedback should be specific, factual, and tied to observable outcomes.  Don’t assume your firm’s norms will be interpreted correctly – spell out the norms.   (Look out for this topic on a future podcast.) Many neurodivergent people have rejection sensitive dysphoria (RSD) – a tendency to interpret even perceived negativity as a personal rejection – and this can often make hearing feedback hard when it takes more energy to stay steady. On the other side, knowing someone will speak up when something is wrong can help ease anxiety about being left out of the loop. Highlighting their positive contributions in a public way (such as in meetings) can also help!
• Documented role expectations and processes – Autistic people report 2.6 times lower preference than others for using verbal communication vs 2.3 time higher preference for utilizing written communication. (ttps://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11897150/) As a Lean Six Sigma Black Belt I also love nothing better than to see good documentation that spells out work standards and especially how to handle exception cases.  Escalation paths and decision-making authority should be clearly defined.  If the documentation doesn’t already exist or isn’t to standard, letting them take part in its creation and editing can help create a sense of belonging and expertise in the team.
• Training – Train the individual from the work standard documents rather than focusing on verbal coaching. Allow extra time for questions and absorbing the material.  Communicate in advance when the process changes and ensure training has happened prior to implementing the changes.  Don’t train on multiple processes at once – allow mastery of one process before adding others – multi-tasking may be more challenging.  If multi-tasking cannot be avoided, give a defined task priority in case demands conflict. Self-paced training in general is king – a series of long meetings is likely to feel constraining and result in the employee doing the bare minimum just to get out of the meeting rather than give the material full attention.
• Meeting solutions – Our second podcast episode focused on ways meetings can be more challenging for neurodiverse workers and how to address that.
  • Clear meeting agenda – not having a clear agenda sent out in advance of the meeting creates a higher stress level, especially if the meeting does not have adequate advance notice.
  • Avoid scheduling multiple back-to-back meetings – being around multiple people in meetings drains limited social energy – allow for breaks to recharge social batteries. Allowing cameras to be off on some remote meetings can also reduce stress.
  • Alternative participation options – for people who have a high degree of anxiety talking in front of the group, allow for options such as submitting written inputs prior to the meeting or allowing them to send instant chats to the meeting organizer to be shared.
• Hybrid work – For some autistic people driving is not an option. Ingrid found driving caused too many inputs to process at one time that was overwhelming.  Now she utilizes public bus transit to get to the office.  For many people, like a staff member of mine, this is a time consuming method of transportation – in this person’s case, a bike ride to the first bus stop, 2 buses, then bike into the office.  Obviously this presents a huge challenge, especially in inclement weather.  Allowing a higher level of remote work than the office norm can ease this burden and is a fair accommodation in my opinion.  Ingrid also notes that reduced time in the office means more social energy leftover for things like the important meetings – and all the better if there are snacks!

Simple accommodations related to communication, environment, and workflow design make the workplace more autism-friendly while benefiting all employees.

Lessons Learned as a Manager

As an operations manager, I’ve grown from working with our autistic staff.  The most important lesson I’ve learned is to adapt my own work style when needed to meet the needs that emerge.  Some things I’ve learned along the way:

• Avoid Stalled Work – If the clearly defined workflows do not include a current scenario, an autistic employee is likely to halt work until someone in authority clearly defines the path to take. If you want the employee to make their own decisions on alternative workflows, be clear they have that authority.  It can be really anxiety inducing to know something needs to be done and have nothing happen on it for extended periods of time.
• Avoid Meeting Stress – I once had a clearly defined agenda, but one employee panicked when asked for input on one of the agenda items. I learned to specifically contact that employee in advance to alert him to what agenda items he should be prepared to give input.
• Value Employee Feedback – I have gotten some of the most honest feedback from neurodiverse staff. That lack of filtering means learning things about my management style other staff may have hesitated to tell me. I’ve learned to not take it personally if the delivery is perhaps sometimes more blunt, understanding that it is coming from a place of honesty and intent to provide constructive/practical guidance to improve process.
• Address Team Expectations – For my employee who does not drive and has more remote work accommodations, one work team had several members who resented this employee did not have to come into the office as often as they did. Don’t assume everyone will be on board creating the right office culture.  I asked the loudest complainer to tell me what it was they specifically wanted regarding hybrid work rather than focusing on what someone else was doing.
• Employee Privacy – It is not for the manager to decide to disclose disabilities of any kind a staff member has with other people. Only individuals can decide what to disclose.  If you have an employee with disabilities who wishes to keep that as private information, be prepared to tell others on the team that you will not be disclosing why you have provided accommodations.

Many of my lessons learned are really that providing an autism-friendly work environment has helped me work better with other employees.  I’m a strong extrovert, so I’ve learned that providing alternative ways to participate in a meeting and more advanced warning shows sensitivity for introverted colleagues. Being really specific about expectations on work dress code has helped me avoid issues with employees from younger generations that may take casual at work too far without better guidance.

Making Autism-Friendly Management Approachable for Law Firms

If you are interested in piloting an initiative, there are organizations willing to assist.  Many autism-related non-profits have staff that facilitate working with both autistic candidates and firms that hire them.  Assistance can be provided from the interview stage through training managers.  In our case, we even had some coaching of managers and employees after hiring.

Management training does not need to involve attaining medical expertise.  Training can be focused on providing clarity in culture and operations.  For many autistic individuals who are historically underemployed, you may be providing the first professional experience.  Give yourself some grace – allow yourself to learn as you go just as I hope you have some grace for the employee new to an office environment.

Conclusion: A Better Way to Build Legal Teams

I encourage law firms and legal departments to rethink how work is structured and managed to bring on autistic staff to your operations.  Inclusive design strengthens legal teams.

You will likely see positive impacts in accuracy, retention and compliance.  One thing I’ve learned from my daughter is the unswerving loyalty you can have from an employee when you’ve been the firm that took the chance on hiring them.  That firm that could be benefitting from a revival in employee loyalty could be you.

The views and opinions expressed are those of Ingrid and Pam individually and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of IBM or Orlans Law Group, respectively.