By Sheila Pursglove
Legal News
In her late teens, Shea Mace became addicted to drugs and alcohol as a way to cope with overwhelming childhood traumas. By age 22, she was homeless, hopeless, and in serious legal trouble because of her substance abuse.
Fortunately, she was thrown a lifeline with the opportunity to be enrolled in an Adult Treatment Court in lieu of prison time.
“I truly believe had I not been given this opportunity, I wouldn’t be alive today,” she says. “The Adult Treatment Court treated me like a human being instead of a criminal and connected me with services that gave me the tools I needed to rebuild my life.”
Mace’s personal mental health struggles as well as those suffered by friends and family led her to search for answers within the field of psychology, and she earned her undergrad degree in the subject from Wayne State University.
“I’ve also always had a genuine curiosity for all the sciences, social and otherwise,” she says. “I had a tough childhood, and the sciences helped me to try and make sense of it all.”
The inherent challenge and ability to positively impact people’s lives drew her to the practice of medicine. After earning her degree in Physician Assistant studies from Wayne State University she has been a cardiac surgery PA at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit for over 13 years, continuing to work there full-time while attending law school.
However, after 10 years of practicing medicine, Mace is now pursuing a JD at Wayne State University Law School on a full tuition merit scholarship,.
“Medicine and the law are intricately intertwined, and often inseparable,” she says. “While my ability to help individual patients is not insignificant, I’ve seen an inordinate number of issues in healthcare that have potential to be improved with better policy. The legal system has the power to effectuate those changes—not only for patients, but for healthcare workers and the system as a whole. Working through the pandemic highlighted these issues even more and solidified my goals.”
Mace is particularly interested in bioethics, equitable distribution of health care, crisis standards of care, and diversionary rehabilitation for substance abuse related crimes:
She has found serving as symposium director for the Journal of Law in Society has been rewarding. She chose the topic, “Moving towards a trauma-informed legal system: a holistic approach to addiction-related crimes,” noting that throughout her own personal recovery from trauma and substance abuse, she has witnessed how entangled these issues are—and how the legal system is uniquely poised to intervene in a meaningful way.
“Trauma-informed lawyering did not exist when I was a defendant—in fact, I was re-traumatized and dehumanized by several people while going through the criminal justice system,” she says.
“Utilizing a trauma-informed approach is fundamentally about incorporating compassion and humility into legal practice, and therefore it’s available to everyone. I believe this approach not only helps reduce the incidence of re-traumatization of victims, but also reduces vicarious trauma which many legal professionals are at risk of experiencing through their work. I hope to someday see it the norm in law practice instead of the exception.”
As president of the school’s Health Law Society, Mace has enjoyed organizing events and meeting with leaders in the health law field, that encompasses numerous realms including public health, contracts, torts, environmental law, and constitutional law.
“Health law is often overlooked as a potential career path, but it’s a rich field with a great deal of opportunity,” she says.
As a research assistant, Mace has found it rewarding to work on the legal issues surrounding crisis standards of care, wastewater screening for Covid-19, and climate change. She also has attended meetings of a Michigan Department of Health and Human Services Task Force.
“Public health leaders throughout the state revised the previous standards by incorporating knowledge gleaned from the pandemic, often during surges of the pandemic, which has really been exciting and interesting to witness,” she says.
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