Michael Schwartz, a deaf lawyer, is an associate professor of law and supervising attorney for the Disability Rights Clinic, Office of Clinical Legal Education, at Syracuse University College of Law, a post he has held since August 2004. Schwartz received his B.A. in English from Brandeis University; an M.A. in Theater Arts from Northwestern University; a J.D. from New York University School of Law; an LL.M. from Columbia University School of Law; and a Ph.D. in Education from Syracuse University. Schwartz has held positions as law clerk to a federal district court judge in the Southern District of New York; assistant district attorney in the Appeals Bureau of the New York County District Attorney's Office; assistant attorney general in the Civil Rights Bureau of the New York State Department of Law; trial attorney for the Civil Rights Division of the United States Department of Justice; and now professor of law at Syracuse University College of Law. Recently he completed a semester sabbatical as a Fulbright scholar at Queen's University Belfast in Northern Ireland where he studied the communication dynamic between Deaf patients, their health care providers and sign language interpreters called on to facilitate communication between the parties.