Stephen Ellmann was an award-winning author, legal educator, and expert on South African law, legal ethics, clinical legal education, and constitutional law. As a staff attorney for the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Alabama, from 1977 to 1983, he worked on voting rights cases, institutional reform litigation for inmates and people with mental disabilities, anti-Ku Klux Klan suits, and defense work in capital murder trials. Ellmann's work as an educator at the New York Law School, Harvard Law School, and Columbia University School of Law is well-remembered today, and his legacy continues with the Stephen J. Ellmann Clinical Theory Workshop. While teaching at Columbia in 1987, Ellmann was invited to co-teach a course on apartheid, launching a lifelong dedication to South African legal issues.