David Udell

David Udell, Executive Director of the National Center for Access to Justice (NCAJ), guides initiatives that are achieving policy reform that helps people obtain justice in American courts, including NCAJ’s Justice Index Project, New Models of Representation Project and Law Student Pro Bono Project. He has held leadership roles in the national civil right to counsel movement and the national indigent defense reform movement, and also coordinated national initiatives to strengthen the nation’s Legal Services Corporation. Founding director of the Justice Program of the Brennan Center for Justice from September 1997 to August 2010, he has also served as a Senior Attorney at Legal Services for the Elderly and as a Managing Attorney at MFY Legal Services. He is a member of the New York Court System’s Committee on Non-lawyers and the Justice Gap, a member of the Advisory Board to the Justice Center of the New York County Lawyers’ Association, and a former member of the New York City Bar Association’s committees on Professional Responsibility and on Pro Bono and Legal Services. He has taught NCAJ’s law school clinic – The Justice Gap: Strategies for Securing the Delivery of Equal Justice in American Courts, at Cardozo Law School, and has also taught courses at New York University Law School and Fordham Law School.