Talk Justice: Episode Fifty-Six

Guest Speakers

Danielle Hirsch is the Interim Court Services Director of the Court Consulting Division at the National Center for State Courts. In that capacity, Danielle is working to develop, guide and implement policies and procedures of court consulting operations to ensure success, high-quality work. In addition, Danielle has a professional focus on access to justice initiatives. She leads several large national access to justice projects for NCSC and serves as lead staff for the new $11M Eviction Diversion Initiative, and the Conference of Chief Justices and Conference of State Court Administrators’ Access and Fairness Committee, the Post-Pandemic Planning Technology Supergroup, and the Blueprint for Racial Justice’s Improving Diversity of the Bench, Bar and Workforce Working Group. In addition, Danielle is the co-creator and a co-host of Tiny Chats.

Before joining NCSC, Danielle was the Assistant Director of Civil Justice Division of the Administrative Office of Illinois, where Danielle was responsible for leading and managing the judicial branch’s work to promote, facilitate and enhance access to justice in Illinois with a particular emphasis on efforts to remove barriers and increase the ease of interacting with courts by persons who cannot afford lawyers to represent their interests and needs.  Before joining the Administrative Office of Illinois Courts, Danielle served as the Executive Director of the Illinois Supreme Court Commission on Access to Justice and the Director of Advocacy at The Chicago Bar Foundation. Among many highlights of her work, Danielle developed and managed an innovative new program, Illinois JusticeCorps, which places college and law students in courthouses to provide procedural assistance to people without lawyers. At the beginning of her career, Danielle clerked for the Honorable William Wayne Justice of the US District Court for the Western District of Texas and Justice ZM Yacoob of the Constitutional Court of South Africa.

Danielle brings a broad range of relevant experience to the NCSC. Danielle has authored numerous articles in law reviews, bar journals and other publications and frequently is called upon to speak at legal, academic, and nonprofit meetings and events.

Jennifer Leitch, JD, LLM, PhD is a researcher and law teacher, primarily in the area of legal ethics and professionalism, access to justice, and dispute processes. Her PhD dissertation at Osgoode included ethnographic research involving self-represented litigants’ experiences participating in the civil justice system.  She continues to research and publish in the fields of access to justice and legal ethics. She also practiced civil litigation at Goodmans LLP in Toronto. Jennifer was been an adjunct faculty member of Osgoode Hall Law School and the University of Toronto Faculty of Law where she taught legal ethics and professionalism, legal process and legal research and writing as well as torts most recently.  She is also the Associate Director and an instructor in the Ethics, Society and Law program at Trinity College, University of Toronto and a Senior Research Fellow with the Canadian Forum on Civil Justice.  Jennifer lives in Toronto with her partner and twins.