General Coordinators

Alan Paterson is a Professor of Law and Director of the Centre for Professional Legal Studies at Strathclyde University Law School, Scotland. He is the Chair of the International Legal Aid Group (ILAG) being the co-organizer for the thirteen conferences of the Group in The Hague (1995), Edinburgh (1997), Vancouver (1999), Melbourne (2001), Harvard (2003), Killarney (2005), Antwerp (2007), Wellington (2009), Helsinki (2011), The Hague (2013), Edinburgh (2015), South Africa (2017) and Ottawa (2019). He is also the Chair of the Legal Aid and Legal Services Group of the International Working Group on Comparative Legal Professions; the Chair of the Legal Services Group of Citizens Advice Scotland; Adviser to the Scottish Legal Aid Board and the Law Society of Scotland and responsible for the training and monitoring aspects of quality assurance of the peer review programme for civil, children and criminal legal aid lawyers in Scotland; International and Expert Adviser to the Scottish Government’s Independent Review of Legal Aid (2017). Educated at Edinburg and Oxford Universities and qualified as a solicitor in Scotland, he has published widely in the field of legal aid and legal services, including: “Resourcing Civil Justice”, co-authored with T. Goriely (1996); “The Transformation of Legal Aid”, co-authored with F. Regan, T. Goriely and D. Fleming (1999); “Paths to Justice Scotland”, co-authored with H. Genn (2001); “Contesting Professionalism: Legal Aid and Lon-lawyers in England and Wales”, co-authored with R. Moorhead and A. Sherr (2003); “Peer Review and Quality Assurance” (2007); “Lawyers and the Public Good” (2012); “Country Report of consultancy Study on the Feasibility and Desirability of establishing an Independent Legal Authority for the Legal Aid Services Concil, Hong Kong” (2012); and “Face to Face Legal Services and their Alternatives”, co-authored with Roger Smith (2013). Awarded OBE for services to Legal Education and the Law (2010).
Bryant Garth is Distinguished Professor Emeritus and Interim Dean at the University California-Irvine School of Law, where he has been since 2012. His scholarship focuses on the legal profession, the sociology of law, globalization, and legal education. He began his career working with Mauro Cappelletti on the Florence Access-to-Justice Project, which resulted in five published volumes (1977-79). His three major books on law and globalization, co-authored with Yves Dezalay and published by the University of Chicago Press, are “Dealing in Virtue” (1996), “The Internationalization of Palace Wars” (2002) and “Asian Legal Revivals” (2010). The current book, which he is co-authoring again with Yves Dezalay and it entitled “Law as Reproduction and Revolution: An Interconnected History, will be published this summer by the University of California Press. He has been Dean at Indiana University School of Law-Bloomington and Southwestern Law School and Director of the American Bar Foundation. He served as co-editor of the Journal of Legal Education from 2011-14. He is also on the Executive Coordinating Committee of the “After the J.D.” project, the first longitudinal study of the U.S. legal profession, and the Board of the NALP Foundation; and he chairs the Advisory Committee of the Law School Survey of Student Engagement.
Cleber Francisco Alves is a Professor at Fluminense Federal University (Brazil) and a researcher at its PhD and Master’s Program in Sociology and Law (PPGSD/UFF). He served as Dean of the Law Faculty at the Universidade Católica de Petrópolis (1999-2002). He received his PhD in Law (2005) from Pontificia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro: the doctoral thesis is a comparative study about legal aid in the United States, in France and in Brazil. He was a Visiting Fellow at the University of Baltimore, USA (2003), at the Université de Montpellier, France (2004), and at the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies of the University of London (2014-2015). He is also a Public Defender (since 1994) with the Rio de Janeiro’s State Public Defenders and works representing poor litigants in a Civil Court in his hometown, Petrópolis (Brazil). He has published many books and articles in the field of legal aid, including: “Justiça para todos! Assistencia Jurídica Gratuita nos Estados Unidos, na França e no Brasil” (2006); “Defensoria Pública no século XXI: Novos Horizontes e Desafios”, co-authored with P. Gonzalez (2017); “Access to Justice in Brazil – The Brazilian Legal Aid Model”, co-authored with A. Castro, D. Esteves and F. Silva (2017); and ブラジルにおける司法アクセス・ブラジルの法律扶助モデル,co-authored with T. Ikenaga and D. Esteves (Jiyu to Seigi – 2017).
Diogo Esteves is Master in Law and Sociology and doctoral researcher at the Fluminense Federal University’s Program of Sociology and Law (Programa de Pós-Graduação em Sociologia e Direito da Univeridade Federal Fluminense – PPGSD/UFF), where he conduct comparative studies on access to justice and legal aid. He is Professor at Foundation Superior School of Public Defender’s Office of Rio de Janeiro (Fundação Escola Superior da Defensoria Pública do Estado do Rio de Janeiro – FESUDEPERJ), where he teaches brazilian legal aid since 2012. He is also a Public Defender of the State of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (since 2008) and works representing vulnerable people in civil and criminal cases. His researcher resulted in several books and articles on the subject of access to justice and legal aid, including: “Access to Justice in Brazil – The Brazilian Legal Aid Model”, co-authored with A. Castro, C. Alves and F. Silva (2017); “Princípios Institucionais da Defensoria Pública”, co-authored with F. Silva (2018); and ブラジルにおける司法アクセス・ブラジルの法律扶助モデル co-authored with T. Ikenaga and C. Alves (Jiyu to Seigi – 2017).
Earl Johnson Jr served as Justice on the California Court of Appeal for a quarter century, retiring in 2007 for the express purpose of researching and writing a history of civil legal aid in the United States, a three-volume under the title “To Establish Justice for All: The Past and Future of Civil Legal Aid in the United States” (2014). Johnson earned his B.A. with Honors in Economics from Northwestern University, his J.D. from University of Chicago Law School where he was book review editor of the University of Chicago Law Review, and his L.L.M. in Criminal Law from Northwestern University School of Law. Johnson started his legal career as a federal prosecutor in the Organized Crime and Racketeering Section, bust shifted to the legal service field when he became Deputy Director of Washington’s Neighborhood Legal Services Project (now Program) in 1964. He served has the Director of the War on Poverty’s OEO Legal Services Program from 1966-68, then as a Professor of Law at the University of Southern California where he also directed the Program on Dispute Resolution Policy at USC’s Social Science Research Institute and was a visiting scholar at the University of Florence’s Comparative Law Center where he worked with Mauro Cappelletti on the Florence Access-to-Justice Project. He co-drafted the first version of the Legal Services Corporation legislation which, after many changes and the hard work of others, eventually passed as the Legal Services Corporation Act in 1974. Johnson’s research resulted in several books and a dozen articles on the subject of legal aid and access to justice, including authoring “Justice and Reform: The Formative Years of the OEO Service Program” (1974) and co-authoring “Toward Equal Justice: A Comparative Study of Legal Aid in Modern Societies” (1975). After his appointment to the bench in 1982, Johnson published several more articles on legal aid and chaired the state bar’s “Access to Justice Working Group” which led to creation of the California Commission on Access to Justice in 1997. Founding chair of National Equal Justice Library at Georgetown Law School which collects and preserve the history of legal aid in criminal and civil cases. Former chair and board member of the California Access to Justice Commission. Member, steering committee of the National Coalition for a Civil Right to Counsel.