Susan Stefan is an attorney at the forefront of the legal movement to assert the rights of the disabled and develop innovative approaches that can overcome systemic barriers to effective treatment for the mentally ill.

Currently, Stefan is a staff attorney at the Center for Public Representation in Newton, Massachusetts, where she directs the Center’s Emergency Department Project. Prior to working for the Center for Public Representation, Stefan taught disability law and mental health law at the University of Miami’s School of Law.

Stefan received her J.D. from Stanford Law School and her master’s from Cambridge University after graduating magna cum laude from Princeton University. During her distinguished legal career to date, the rulings in several of her landmark cases have resulted in significant public policy changes to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act. These include the removal of questions about mental health treatment on applications for bar admission and judicial nomination as well as the invalidation of a statute that provided differential access to medical and mental health records.

Stefan has written extensively on legal and policy issues involving people with psychiatric disabilities, including her most recent book Emergency Department Treatment of People with Psychiatric Disabilities: Policy Issues and Legal Requirements.