Stephen Voltz

Before Stephen grew up to be a lawyer and a responsible adult, he was inspired to become a performer by the vibrant street performing scene that surrounded him as a kid growing up in San Francisco.

He taught himself to juggle at an early age and to eat fire when he was a teenager. Armed with those skills and a few magic tricks, he took to the streets to perform while he was in high school and college.

Stephen and his brother John performed at Bay Area tourist attractions including San Francisco’s Fisherman’s Wharf. Their act stood out primarily because it featured a William Tell-like stunt in which Stephen would place an apple on his brother’s back and chop it in half with a two-foot steel machete, wielding the machete so as to slice the apple neatly in two but stopping the blade just in time to avoid maiming his brother. Their mother did not approve.

Stephen went on to receive his A.B. from Oberlin College in 1979, where he majored in religion, studied theater, and taught juggling.

He received his law degree in 1984 from New York University. After graduation, he moved to the Boston area where he has been a trial lawyer ever since with an active practice in both the state and federal courts. He has tried and won leading cases in Massachusetts involving, among other things, sex discrimination in employment, securities fraud and civil racketeering, and the rights of the public in Massachusetts’s beaches.