Phillip Kassel, J.D.

Phillip Kassel is the Executive Director of the Mental Health Legal Advisors Committee, a Massachusetts state agency that provides legal and policy advocacy on a broad range of issues relevant to persons with lived experience. He’s been a poor persons’ lawyer for nearly 40 years, litigating, lobbying, and negotiating reforms of importance to the most vulnerable segments of the indigent populations of the states of Massachusetts, Minnesota, and Washington. In his most recent stop before coming to MHLAC, Phil served as Senior Compliance Director for the Office of English Language Learners of the Boston Public Schools, where he negotiated and helped implement federally mandated reforms of educational services to English Language Learners. Most recently, he authored and successfully lobbied a bill that abolishes the “crime” of “disturbing a school assembly” for juvenile-aged students, a charge leveled against troubled students that justified many inappropriate and traumatizing arrests. Phil is also an accomplished singer in many genres and the author of numerous cabaret shows performed in venues around the Boston area and central Massachusetts.