Over the weekend the Americans with Disabilities Act, a law that has shaped our schools, workplaces, public architecture, and attitudes towards our fellow citizens living with disabilities, turned 30. 

In the run-up to the anniversary, the Lit Daily caught up with Chai Feldblum, a director of workplace culture consulting at Morgan, Lewis & Bockius, who was the lead lawyer in the room of strategists, lobbyists, and legislators drafting the ADA 30-plus years ago. As the conduit between the litigators who had been wielding the disabilities rights law previously on the books and the political people shaping the new one, she uses the term ”legislative lawyer” to describe her work. Feldblum, who went on to draft the 2008 amendments to the ADA and serve as a commissioner of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission from 2010 to 2019, describes herself “someone who loves law, but was sitting in the legislative work, so could combine politics and law together to come up with something that would pass, which is what you want.”