MATTHEW BURNETT
Director of Research and Programs, Access to Justice Research Initiative, American Bar Foundation
Matthew Burnett is the Director of Research and Programs for the Access to Justice Research Initiative at the American Bar Foundation (ABF), a visiting scholar with the Justice Futures Project at Arizona State University, and an adjunct professor of law at Georgetown University Law Center. Prior to joining the ABF, Matthew was Senior Policy Officer at Open Society Foundations (OSF), where he worked to advance access to justice and legal empowerment through research, advocacy, litigation and grantmaking in Africa, Asia, Latin America, Eastern Europe, and the United States. Earlier in his career he helped to launch and led the Immigration Advocates Network and served as law clerk to Justice ZM Yacoob of the Constitutional Court of South Africa. Matthew’s writing on access to civil justice and legal empowerment has appeared in more than 20 publications, and he has given more than 80 presentations and workshops around the world. His research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Justice Bureau of Justice Statistics, the World Bank, and Canada’s International Development Research Centre. He currently serves as an advisor to the National Center for Access to Justice and is co-founder, with Rebecca Sandefur, of Frontline Justice.
NATALIE KNOWLTON
Associate Director of Legal Innovation, Deborah L. Rhode Center on the Legal Profession, Stanford Law
Natalie Anne Knowlton is the Associate Director of Legal Innovation, Deborah L. Rhode Center on the Legal Profession, Stanford Law. She was formerly the Director of Special Projects and a Regulatory Innovation Consultant at IAALS, the Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System. Knowlton is a 2023 ABA Journal Legal Rebel and is listed among the ABA Legal Technology Resource Center’s 2022 Women of Legal Tech. She sits on the Justice Technology Association Advisory Board and the Legal Aid of North Carolina Innovation Lab Advisory Board.
LUCY RICCA
Executive Director, Deborah L. Rhode Center on the Legal Profession
Lucy Ricca is the Executive Director of the Deborah L. Rhode Center on the Legal Profession. Before starting this role, Ricca was the Director of Policy and Programs for the Center and served as the Executive Director from 2013-2018. Ricca is a national expert in efforts to reform regulation of the legal profession to increase innovation, market diversification, and access to justice. She served as the first Executive Director of the Utah Office of Legal Services Innovation, a new regulator of legal services launched by the Utah Supreme Court. She is a member of the Board of Advisors of the Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System (“IAALS”). Ricca has written on the regulation of the profession, the changing practice of law, and diversity in the profession. Ricca received her B.A. cum laude in History from Dartmouth College and her J.D. from the University of Virginia School of Law.
TANINA ROSTAIN
Professor, Georgetown University Law Center
Tanina Rostain is the Agnes Williams Sesquicentennial Professor of Justice Innovation at Georgetown Law Center. Her scholarship focuses on access to justice, the American legal profession, and legal ethics. Current projects explore innovative approaches to improving the transparency, equity, and accessibility of the civil justice system, including through the use of digital technologies, non-lawyer service delivery models, and court modernization. At Georgetown, Porofessor Rostain launched the Justice Lab, a research center dedicated to investigating new modalities to address people’s everyday justice problems. She is the Faculty Director of the South Carolina Justice Navigators Network, a project that trains social service organizations in “Legal First Aid.” She also co-directs the Judicial Innovation Program, a program that places early career designers, data scientists, and other technologists in state courts to pursue court modernization projects. In 2021, Professor Rostain launched the Georgetown Civil Justice Data Commons, a secure court data repository created to facilitate research on evictions and debt collection cases.
REBECCA SANDEFUR
Professor and Director, The Sanford School, Arizona State University
Rebecca L. Sandefur is Professor in and Director of the Sanford School of Social and Family Dynamics at Arizona State University. She investigates access to civil justice from every angle. She specializes in how legal services are delivered and consumed, and examining the relative efficacy of lawyers, nonlawyers, and digital tools as advisers and representatives. This work also explores the organization of civil legal aid across the nation, the role of pro bono services, and how ordinary people understand and attempt to resolve their justice problems. In addition to her appointment at Arizona State University, Sandefur is Faculty Fellow at the American Bar Foundation, where she founded and leads the Access to Justice Research Initiative. Her current public service includes her appointment by the Supreme Court of Arizona to the Arizona Commission on Access to Justice. She is co-founder, with Matthew Burnett, of Frontline Justice. In 2013, Sandefur was The Hague Visiting Chair in the Rule of Law. In 2015, she was named Champion of Justice by the National Center for Access to Justice. In 2018, she was named a MacArthur Fellow for her work on inequality and access to justice. In 2020, she was awarded the Warren E. Burger Award by the National Center for State Courts. Sandefur was born in and spent her early years in Oklahoma, and is an enrolled member of the Chickasaw Nation.
JASON TASHEA
Founding Director, Judicial Innovation Fellowship, Georgetown Law
Jason Tashea is a writer and entrepreneur exploring the intersection of justice and technology. A lawyer by training, he is the founding director and a co-founder of the newly formed Judicial Innovation Fellowship program at Georgetown and a consultant for the World Bank on access to justice and technology issues. He was most recently a product manager at a justice technology startup and an adjunct professor of law at Georgetown University Law Center, where he created and taught a practicum on criminal justice technology, policy, and law. He’s also the editor of the Justice Tech Download, a weekly industry newsletter and the creator of 40 Futures, a speculative fiction podcast about the criminal justice system. He received his JD from the University of Oregon School of Law and has a BA in history from Linfield College.