I was a Public Defender (PD) for just three years, some 40 years ago, but, in many
ways, those were the years that defined the rest of my career, both structurally and
philosophically. After that job, I became the first director of the NJ Public Advocate’s
Division of Mental Health Advocacy, a statewide, state-funded law office that
represented individuals with psychiatric disabilities in individual and law reform
actions. I then became a professor at New York Law School, where I have been
teaching mental disability law since 1985, and where I now supervise 13 separate
courses in the school’s online mental disability law program, and where I also direct
the International Mental Disability Law Reform Project in the law school’s Justice
Action Center. I lecture and write frequently about all aspects of mental disability law,
often with respect to questions of criminal law and procedure. My PD experiences
have informed and guided all of this work, and they are never far from my mind.