About Sejal

Sejal H. Patel works as a neutral – conducting internal investigations, mediations, trainings, and workplace reviews. For over 25 years, Sejal has worked through the entire life cycle of legal disputes from investigations to Supreme Court appeals. She served as both a federal prosecutor and a criminal defense attorney, has represented plaintiffs and defendants in civil cases, and has mediated, adjudicated, and investigated hundreds of cases. She honors three core pillars of her practice, as developed in her graduate studies in the law and in ethics – to listen with care and without judgment, to respect everyone involved, and to resolve conflicts efficiently and effectively.

Litigation | Dispute Resolution

Sejal graduated from Northwestern Law School in 2000 and joined the Attorney General’s Honors Program at the United States Department of Justice in the Criminal Division, Fraud Section. A certified rape victim's advocate prior to entering law school, she also served as a Special Assistant United States Attorney in the District of Columbia in the Sex Offense and Domestic Violence Unit. She then worked in the San Francisco office of Pillsbury Winthrop in the White Collar and Corporate Investigations Group. She moved to Boston in 2004 and began a solo practice as a criminal defense attorney, specializing in state and federal criminal trials and appeals for indigent clients. Sejal served on the Committee for Public Counsel Services Appellate and Post-Conviction Panel for Massachusetts and the Criminal Justice Act Panel for the First Circuit. She obtained certification as a mediator through Metropolitan Mediation Services and mediated cases in small claims and criminal courts in the greater Boston area,

The Boston Globe featured a front-page article about her work in 2008, after she won exoneration for her client, Guy Randolph, who pleaded guilty to a sex crime he did not commit. Mr. Randolph served ten years in jail and was classified as a Level 3 sex offender for another seven years before he was exonerated in Suffolk Superior Court. Sejal then sued the Commonwealth and obtained the maximum statutory award of $500,000 for her client. She published an essay about the case in The Champion, a magazine publication of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. From 2010-2012, Sejal served as one of four lead trial attorneys to Tarek Mehanna in a federal terrorism case in Boston. The case was covered extensively in the Boston Globe, the New York Times, National Public Radio, and many local television and newspaper outlets and involved complex issues of national security and free speech.

Sejal was recognized as one of 20 “Up & Coming Lawyers” by Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly in April 2010. She also was a 2010, 2011, 2012, and 2013 New England Super Lawyers “Rising Star.” In 2009, she served on the Boston Bar Association’s task force on reducing wrongful convictions in Massachusetts. The 20-person task force included prosecutors, police, forensic analysts, judges, defense attorneys, public defenders and academics in what the BBA called the “broadest group of major players in the criminal justice system ever assembled to prevent wrongful convictions in the Bay State.”

Sejal moved to San Francisco in 2014, where she served on the First and Sixth District Appellate Panels in continuing to litigate felony appeals for adult and juvenile indigent defendants. She also served as an adjudicator and evidentiary specialist for Stanford University's Title IX Office from 2016-2020. There, she designed and implemented faculty, staff, and attorney trainings about the Title IX Process. She also conducted over 50 investigations for Bay Area universities, hospitals, museums and companies. In addition to her investigatory practice, she serves as a Court Settlement Officer in the San Francisco Superior Court Court’s Alternative Dispute Resolution program.

She joined the Office of the General Counsel at Stanford University as Senior University Counsel before resuming her solo practice in 2024.

Wellness | Trauma | Cultural Sensitivity

Sejal also has expertise in wellness, trauma, and cultural sensitivity. She studied religion, ethics, and politics at Harvard Divinity School, where she earned a Masters in Theological Studies and a Certificate in Religious Studies and Education in 2014. She is currently a graduate student at the Institute of Buddhist Studies in Berkeley, CA, studying how mindfulness and chaplaincy skills can enhance dispute resolution work. Across both graduate programs, she has studied and written about how to conduct legal processes with wellness of all participants in mind, which includes extensive study of trauma and cultural sensitivity. 

In addition, she has served as pro bono counsel to ​Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence and to the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights, helping with asylum cases for domestic violence survivors from Mexico and Central America. And she has been a volunteer at 826 Valencia as a creative writing teacher and illustrator for San Francisco public school children. 

She has published many essays and has spoken about her work in the law, wellness, trauma, and cultural competency spaces. Her essays have been published or are forthcoming in Creative Nonfiction, Brevity, The Rumpus, Harvard Divinity Bulletin, and other publications, and she was a Contributing Editor for Carve Magazine. She was a featured speaker on the theme of “Care” for the Harvard Divinity Dialogues Series in January 2015, was a member of the Harvard Divinity School Alumni/ Alumnae Council, and served on the Strategic Planning Committee for the Religion and Public Life Program at HDS.

In Loving Memory of Guy Randolph's mother Ruth Johns (1934-2001)

Education

  • Trinity University, San Antonio, TX
    Bachelor of Arts, Economics & Spanish, 1997

  • Northwestern Law School, Chicago, IL
    Juris Doctor, 2000

  • Harvard Divinity School, Cambridge MA
    Masters in Theological Studies, Religion, Ethics & Politics, 2014
    Certificate in Religious Studies and Education, 2014

  • Institute of Buddhist Studies, Berkeley, CA
    Candidate for Master of Arts in Buddhist Studies,
    Program track: Buddhist Chaplaincy

Admissions

  • Texas (2000)

  • California (2002)

  • Massachusetts (2005)

Languages

  • English

  • Spanish

  • Hindi

  • Gujarati

Courts

  • Texas Supreme Court

  • California Supreme Court

  • Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts

  • U.S. District Court, D. Mass.

  • First Circuit Court of Appeals

  • Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals

  • United States Supreme Court