Faculty List
Sejal H. Patel joined the Santa Clara Law faculty in Fall 2026 as a Senior Fellow.
Sejal has been practicing law for over 25 years. She started her career in the Attorney General Honors Program at the U.S. Department of Justice, Criminal Division/ Fraud Section and as a Special Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Domestic Violence and Sex Office Unit of the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the District of Columbia. She handled many felony and misdemeanor matters from the early investigatory stages through grand jury, pretrial motions, trials, and sentencing. She then moved to San Francisco and worked in the White Collar and Investigations unit at Pillsbury.
Inspired by her professors and experiences as a student in Northwestern Law School’s legal clinics, she opened a solo practice when she and her family moved to Boston, focusing on indigent criminal defense work. She represented many defendants in this role, at the trial and appellate levels in the Massachusetts state and federal courts. She litigated an exoneration in 2008 (Commonwealth v. Guy Randolph), which was featured on the front page of the Boston Globe. She also tried a federal terrorism case (U.S. v. Tarek Mehanna) with the law firm of Carney & Bassil in Boston, which was featured in nearly every major media outlet and involved complex issues of religious freedom, free speech, national security, and terrorism. She also won full or partial reversals in the Massachusetts appellate courts and was part of the defense team involving juvenile life without parole.
In 2012, she returned to school to study ethics and the law at Harvard Divinity School and earned her Masters of Theological Studies in 2014. There, she studied and wrote about the emotional issues and ethical quandaries involved in high-stakes legal matters. She learned to infuse the beautiful art of chaplaincy into legal work.
She and her family then returned to the Bay Area, and still in solo practice, she represented indigent adult and juvenile defendants in criminal appellate proceedings, securing full or partial appellate victories in the First and Sixth Appellate Districts. She also served as a Title IX Hearing Officer and Adjudicator for Stanford University. She conducted over 50 large-scale, sensitive internal investigations for post-secondary educational institutions, nonprofits, and private entities. She then joined Stanford University’s Office of the General Counsel as Senior University Counsel.
Sejal also has served as a mediator and Court Settlement Officer over 20 years – in the Boston-area courts, in the San Francisco and Alameda Superior Courts, for the San Francisco Department of Police Accountability, and with the Bar Association of San Francisco. After handling conflict at the earliest stages in investigations to the highest state and federal courts, she believes ardently empowering parties to resolve matters themselves, in the interest of emotional and legal closure.
Apart from the honor of serving the community through her law practice, she loves spending time with her husband and two adult daughters, continuing her lifelong love for and study of dance, and working on her creative writing projects.
J.D., Northwestern Law School, 2000
B.A., Trinity University, in Economics, 1997
- Alternative Dispute Resolution
- Internal Investigations
- Criminal Law and Procedure - Trial and Appellate
- Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts
- Supreme Court of California
- Supreme Court of Texas
- U.S. District Court, D. Mass.
- First Circuit Court of Appeals
- Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals
- United States Supreme Court
- One of 20 “Up and Coming” Lawyers - Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly - 2010
- New England Super Lawyers “Rising Star” - 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013
- U.S. Department of Justice, Meritorious Award for Outstanding Performance - 2002
Sejal H. Patel, Sorry, That's Classified: Post-9/11 Surveillance Powers, the Sixth Amendment, and Niebuhrian Ethics, 23 B.U. PUB. INT. L.J. 287 (2014).
Sejal H. Patel, “Paying Attention to Pain: A Book Review of the Empathy Exams by Leslie Jamison,” Harvard Divinity Bulletin, Summer/ Fall 2014.
Sejal H. Patel, “Memoir of an Exoneration,” The Champion, April 2014.
Sejal H. Patel, “Kids and Gun Safety,” American Bar Association, Children’s Rights Litigation Newsletter, Spring 2014.
Sejal H. Patel, “The cost of transcript delay: years wasted in prison,” Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly, October 8, 2012, p. 38-9.
Jeanne M, Kempthorne, Sejal H. Patel, and Allison G. Haar, “Justice Denied: appeals mired in delay,” Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly, October 8, 2012, p. 39.
“Getting It Right: Improving the Accuracy and Reliability of the Criminal Justice System in Massachusetts,” A Report by the Boston Bar Association Task Force, December 2009.