Meet Keith S.

Keith shares reflections on his calling to the law.</em == Seekers is like extended family to me and has greatly impacted every area of my life over the last 30 years. But in no area has Seekers had more effect on me than in my approach to career. Seeking to follow call in my professional life has been a challenge over many years. I left a more traditional practice of law in 2001 to develop a mediation practice to help parties find better solutions and avoid litigation, which continues in some measure to the present. In addition to many other mediation avenues I pursued, in 2012 I was selected as part of a small group of mediators to assist in special education disputes in DC. These are conflicts where typically parents initiate cases against the public or charter school for not conducting adequate testing or not developing IEPs and providing the special education services they think their children need to receive an appropriate education. However, in special education as in many other areas, people don’t seem to want to mediate but prefer to litigate, with about 20 special education cases going to litigation for every one in mediation in DC, despite efforts to encourage use of mediation. So in 2014 I became a hearing officer, given the responsibility for hearing and ruling on the cases in litigation. This was a return to the world of formal litigation in which hearings are generally two days with attorneys on both sides, lots of expert witnesses and hundreds of pages of exhibits in most cases. I hadn’t expected to ever return to litigation, but have found it much more acceptable to be the decision-maker rather than an advocate (as in my earlier years as a lawyer). More significantly, my work in special education has increasingly felt like call, as I have learned the nuances and endeavor to provide justice to all involved by rendering decisions that are fair and well-reasoned for both parents and schools. At the same time, I try to deal with all participants – lawyers and clients alike – in as compassionate and open-hearted a manner as possible, recognizing that everyone involved is generally trying to do the best they can, regardless of whether I am ultimately persuaded by them or not at the end of the day. A large proportion of my cases involve very sad situations as a result of the serious disabilities of the children and/or the hard circumstances that they come from. I’ve had parents who are terrified that their children might be the next school shooters, and lots of adoptive parents with children messed up from birth by mothers on drugs. Many children are impacted by violence – one student said that his cousin was “full-tilt crazy” because the cousin had seen his father murder his mother. I’m also frequently struck by the differences in the cases and experts offered by well-educated parents and their counsel compared to those from parents who are not well educated, even though they also have counsel (as parents’ lawyers get paid by the school if they win). The work is challenging, not only from the complexities of the law and facts in each case, but due to the strict statutory timelines which often add a great deal of pressure. I have become much more comfortable with the work over these last several years and hope for more balance going forward as the number of hearing officers is matched more closely to the cases needing hearings. Seekers Church and particularly my mission groups have supported me as I have sought to discern and follow call in my professional life over many years. And I rely on Seekers to continue to be a place of nurture, discernment and support as I seek to continue following the right path and focusing on the work I should be doing in the world. September 18, 2018