Janet Lord is an international human rights lawyer who specializes in international disability law and policy and inclusive development. She is senior researcher at the Harvard Law School Project on Disability and directs human rights and inclusive development programming at the Burton Blatt Institute at Syracuse University. She also teaches global disability rights law at American University, Washington College of Law.

Serving as legal advisor to Disabled Peoples International, Janet participated in all of the drafting sessions for the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) and provided legal counsel to the UN and several lead governments during those negotiations. She has written extensively on CRPD process, international disability rights as well as disability inclusive development.  She has traveled to more than 30 different countries to work with disabled peoples organizations and to assist in the training, development, and implementation of programs focusing on the human rights of persons with disabilities. A passionate advocate of human rights education, she spearheaded the development of a participatory education manual on the CRPD and worked with local DPOs to have it field tested and translated into more than 8 languages. 

Before joining BBI, Lord spent eight years as a Senior Partner at BlueLaw International, an international law and development firm.  Earlier in her career, she served as an attorney for the World Bank Group providing counsel within the Bank’s conflict resolution network on cases concerning discrimination, harassment, and other disputes.  

Lord holds an LL.B. and LL.M. in law from the University of Edinburgh (Scotland), an LL.M. in international and comparative law from George Washington University Law School, and a B.A. in History from Kenyon College.  She is a member of the New York bar. She is currently serving on the Board of Amnesty International USA.