D. James Greiner
Faculty Director
Jim Greiner is the Honorable S. William Green Professor of Public Law at Harvard Law School. In 1991, he obtained a B.A. with High Honors from the University of Virginia, which he maintains is the greatest place in the universe. From 1991 to 1992, he was a Rotary International scholar in the Dominican Republic. In 1995, he graduated from the University of Michigan Law School, where he was an Articles Editor for the Michigan Law Review. From 1995-96, he clerked for the Honorable Patrick E. Higginbotham on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. He then practiced law for six years in Washington, D.C., three for the U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Division, Federal Programs Branch, and three for the law firm of Jenner & Block. In 2007, he obtained a Ph.D. from Harvard’s Department of Statistics, joined the Harvard Law School faculty the same year, and was awarded tenure in 2012. His current research is entirely within and devoted to the A2J Lab.
Additional information: CV / ssrn page /email: jgreiner[at]law.harvard.edu
Rianna Brooks
Research Specialist
Rianna Brooks is a research specialist for the A2J Lab. She earned a B.A. in Human Ecology from College of the Atlantic as the recipient of the Edward J. Meade Award for Innovation in Education. Rianna’s prior research experience includes intimate partner violence prevention in rural Maine, enhancing access and equity in schools with the U.S. Department of Education, and developing evidence-based curriculums for schools in Massachusetts. Before joining the lab, she taught students from PreK to 12th grade in a variety of subjects ranging from language arts and outdoor survival skills with teenagers to mindfulness and flower arrangement with toddlers.
Email: rbrooks[at]law.harvard.edu
Marieliette Corretjer
Research Specialist
Marieliette earned a B.A. with honors in Psychology from Cornell University. Her prior research experience includes assessing individual and cross-cultural differences within moral decision-making and evaluating biases in capital jury selection. She is passionate about the intersection of psychology and law, promoting evidence-based practices in the legal field, and the importance of empirical research in advancing social justice. Outside of the A2J Lab, she loves to sing and go rock climbing.
Email: mcorretjer[at]law.harvard.edu
Renee L. Danser
Associate Director of Research and Strategic Partnerships
Renee L. Danser is Associate Director of Research and Strategic Partnerships with the Access to Justice Lab. Ms. Danser obtained a Bachelor of Arts and her J.D. from the University of Pittsburgh. She graduated from the Institute for Court Management Fellows Program in May of 2013 where her project was awarded the Vice President’s Award of Merit for Applied Research.
Ms. Danser began her career as a court manager when she chaired the multidisciplinary committee to unify the family court in Pittsburgh under the best practice principles of “One Judge/One Family”. Thereafter Ms. Danser began oversight of self-represented litigant services. Ms. Danser then went on to oversee all court operations as the Court Administrator for the 43rd Judicial District of Pennsylvania before transitioning to advocacy as the Deputy Director of the Self-Represented Litigation Network (SRLN). In that role she was responsible for connecting lawyers, judges, and allied professionals who are creating innovative and evidence-based solutions so that self-represented litigants have meaningful access to the courts and get the legal help they need.
Ms. Danser served on the Board of Directors for the National Association for Court Management (NACM) as the Membership Services Committee Chair and on the Executive Board of Directors and chair of the Government Relations Committee of the Monroe County Bar Association. Ms. Danser was appointed to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court Domestic Relations Procedural Rules Committee and is admitted to practice in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania as well a member of the bar of the Supreme Court of the United States.
Email: rdanser[at]law.harvard.edu
April Faith-Slaker
Associate Director of Research Innovations
April Faith-Slaker is a researcher and attorney whose areas of focus include access to justice, holistic public defense, and professional decision-making in the legal context. Most of her studies explore the effectiveness of alternatives to traditional models within the civil and criminal justice systems. Prior to working at the A2J Lab, she served as Director of the Resource Center for Access to Justice Initiatives at the American Bar Association, where she worked to support the creation and expansion of state access to justice commissions. She also served as the managing editor for the Political and Legal Anthropology Review from 2007-2016. She also worked a program evaluator and researcher at Legal Aid of Nebraska from 2013-2015. And, prior to that she was a researcher at the University of Nebraska’s Center on Children, Families and the Law, where she conducted field studies in the family law and foster care settings as part of a Nebraska Supreme Court improvement project initiative. She has advanced degrees in law as well as human development and social policy, and her undergraduate studies focused on philosophy and psychology.
Email: afaithslaker[at]law.harvard.edu
Ryan Halen
Data Analyst
Ryan Halen is a Data Analyst at the Access to Justice Lab and a doctoral candidate in Political Science at the University of Minnesota. Ryan’s research interests include political methodology and comparative politics, and his dissertation research focuses on the politics of economic inequality and redistribution. Ryan has worked on many academic projects that seek to leverage rigorous, empirical research and tech-based data analytics to better inform our understanding of and strategic approach to alleviating poverty and economic inequality. In his spare time, Ryan enjoys learning about theoretical physics, consciousness, and the experience of Time. This is a big hit at parties.
Email: rhalen[at]law.harvard.edu
Matthew Stubenberg
Associate Director of Legal Technology
Matthew Stubenberg graduated from the University of Maryland Baltimore County in 2009, and graduated cum laude from Maryland Law School in 2013. Interested in using technology to change how the law is practiced, he set out to develop his first legal based app. The app named, Not Guilty App, was a directory of Court resources and Judges in Maryland. Matthew then moved on to create MDExpungement.com, a website that automates the expungement process and has been used to expunge more than 60,000 cases since launching in 2015. Most recently he has created the CLUE program and database for the Maryland Volunteer Lawyers Service which scrapes out Maryland public court records and contains more than 20 million cases.
Email: mstubenberg[at]law.harvard.edu