David Udell, the Founder and Executive Director of the National Center for Access to Justice at Fordham Law School, provided comment for an ABA article that profiles attorney Tiffany Graves’ work increasing access to legal services in Mississippi and across the country.
Then in 2014, Graves became executive director of the state supreme court’s Mississippi Access to Justice Commission. (Disclosure: The author provided pro bono technology support to the commission for an unrelated project while Graves was its director.)
While there, she engaged the faith and medical communities to empower a more holistic set of stakeholders engaging justice issues and released the state’s first self-help forms. She also worked with Judge Mask, a co-chair of the commission, to develop a pro bono clinic in the judge’s district.
Starting in one county, Graves created a toolkit that made it easy to open similar clinics districtwide and across the state.
While there are leaders across the country who use the index to drive reform at home, “Tiffany was one of the best and strongest leaders” who leveraged the rankings, says David Udell, executive director of the National Center for Access to Justice at Fordham University School of Law, which produces the index.