MR ALAN W. HOUSEMAN

Alan W. Houseman is Executive Director of the Center for Law and Social Policy and has held that position since he joined CLASP in 1982. His current work focuses on innovative anti-poverty strategies and the long-term future of civil legal assistance in the United States. He has written numerous articles, manuals, papers and books on legal services and poverty law advocacy as well as on welfare policies.

Mr. Houseman has a long history of involvement in poverty law advocacy and legal services for the poor. During law school, he was Assistant Director (nationally) of the Law Students Civil Rights Research Council. In 1968, he was a Reginald Heber Smith Fellow with Wayne County Neighborhood Legal Services. In 1969, he founded Michigan Legal Services, a statewide legal services program, which represented poor people's organizations on welfare, health, housing, consumer, prison, mental health, education, and family policy issues. Between 1968 and 1976, he was General Counsel for the Michigan Welfare Rights Organization and co-chair of the legal committee of the National Welfare Rights Organization. Between 1976 and 1981, he was a member of the senior staff at the Legal Services Corporation and director of the Research Institute, which Mr. Houseman founded and developed. At the Legal Services Corporation he oversaw and was responsible for funding all of the national and state support centers and the National Clearinghouse (now Sargent Shriver National Center on Poverty Law). The Research Institute also developed new directions in poverty law and undertook research on the delivery of civil legal aid. In addition to directing the staff of CLASP, Mr. Houseman is currently counsel to the National Legal Aid and Defender association (NLADA) and is a leader of the national efforts to preserve and strengthen the federal legal services program. In 2008, he was the head of the Obama Transition Team for the Legal Services Corporation.

Within the civil legal aid community, he has been Chair of the Civil Committee and a past member of the board and executive committee of NLADA. He has also been Chair of the Organization of Legal Services Backup Centers (representing all of the state and national centers), Vice-Chair of the Project Advisory Group and General Counsel to the Coalition on Legal Services.

He has also been involved in a variety of capacities with the American Bar Association. In 2005-2006, he was staff to the ABA Presidential Task Force on Access to Justice and a member of the ABA Task Force to Revise the Standards for the Provision of Civil Legal Aid. He also has been a member of the Comprehensive Legal Needs Study Advisory Group, the Policy Development Committee of the Comprehensive Legal Needs Study and ABA Special Committee on Access to Justice. He has served as an advisor to the ABA Standing Committee on Legal Aid and Indigent Defendants and other ABA initiatives.

Mr. Houseman has been an Adjunct Professor at Georgetown University Law Center and the University of Michigan Law School and has previously taught at Wayne State University Law School. He is a graduate of Oberlin College and New York University School of Law, where he was a Field Fellow in Social Welfare Law (as part of the Hays Civil Liberties Fellowship Program). He has received numerous awards and honors including the National Equal Justice Award and, most recently, the Oberlin College Distinguish Achievement Award.