About Maya Gopika
Maya Gopika Prabhu trained across disciplines before settling into a career that crosses law, medicine and mental health. She holds an A.B. from Harvard University (1994), an M.Sc. from the London School of Economics (1995), an M.D. from Dalhousie Faculty of Medicine (2001) and an LL.B. from McGill Faculty of Law (2002). Those credentials reflect a varied academic itinerary that precedes a practice and teaching life at the intersection of clinical medicine, forensic evaluation and legal practice.
Her early work was in private practice. She joined Davis Polk and Wardwell as a litigation associate in 2002. Two years later she took on a public international assignment as deputy counsel to the Independent Inquiry Committee into the United Nations Oil-for-Food Programme. That role placed her in a complex investigative environment and exposed her to international regulatory and accountability issues.
Prabhu then moved into settings that combined clinical and legal work. In 2010 she served as a forensics fellow at Yale School of Medicine. That fellowship preceded academic appointments at Yale. In 2018 she was named an associate professor at Yale School of Medicine. She also holds the title of clinical associate professor (adjunct) of law at Yale Law School, where she teaches and works with students on cases that involve medical testimony, competency and the law.
Her career has been marked by a steady shift from litigation and international inquiry toward forensic psychiatry and health law. She has worked inside clinical programs and academic centers that sit at the boundary between patient care and legal process. That practical combination informs her classroom teaching and her clinical supervision; students encounter both legal doctrine and the realities of psychiatric assessment.
Prabhu is licensed to practice in New York. Her affiliations include work with the Law and Psychiatry Program at the Connecticut Mental Health Center and positions within Yale’s clinical units. In these roles she examines expert testimony, evaluates competency and consults on cases where mental health diagnoses bear on legal outcomes.
She teaches law students and medical trainees, supervises forensic evaluations and consults on complex cases that require coordinated clinical and legal judgment. Her current practice addresses legal issues at the intersection of mental health and the law.
