The Gage Law Firm, LLC

The Gage Law Firm is an Atlanta practice led by S. Derek Johnson-Gage, an Emory Law graduate with two decades in criminal defense and mental health law who also teaches at Emory as an adjunct professor.

The firm describes itself as gay-owned and operated and a proud and vocal supporter of Atlanta's lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community. Gage has written that he grew up facing the same biases and discrimination as others in the community, and that he takes representing LGBT clients with dignity and respect as a responsibility rather than a specialty.

The practice is narrower than most firms in this directory and deliberately so: criminal defense, consultation on psychiatric hospitalisation and involuntary commitment proceedings, and litigation support to other trial counsel in cases turning on acute mental illness. That combination is genuinely uncommon. Involuntary commitment sits at the point where the criminal system and the mental health system meet, and it is a place LGBTQ+ people, particularly transgender people and those who are young or unhoused, are disproportionately likely to encounter without an affirming advocate.

The firm's stated approach is to represent clients on their potential rather than their perceived disabilities. Gage has been named a Georgia Super Lawyers Rising Star and received an advocacy leadership award from the DeKalb County affiliate of the National Alliance on Mental Illness.