The Legal Services Innovation Committee is an independent advisory Committee of the Utah Supreme Court made up of volunteer lawyers and non-lawyer experts. It is tasked with recommending entities for participation in the Legal Sandbox and proposing regulatory policies. It also directs the regulatory duties of the Office of Legal Services Innovation. The Innovation Office is tasked with regulating non-traditional legal entities and services. The Innovation Office, housed at the Utah State Bar, runs the day-to-day operations of the Office including initial assessments of entity applications, data submissions, and enforcement actions.
John Lund
LSI Committee Chair
John Lund has practiced law since 1984. He is a shareholder with Parsons Behle & Latimer, where, before his retirement, he represented clients in challenging litigation and trials throughout the West. Chambers USA recognizes Mr. Lund as a Band 1 lawyer for commercial litigation and is also a Fellow of the International Academy of Trial Lawyers.
Mr. Lund is a past president of the Utah State Bar and has been involved in its leadership for over a decade. He served two terms as the lawyer representative on Utah’s Judicial Council and has served on various committees and projects relating to improving access to justice and innovation in law practice. These include co-chairing the Utah Bar’s 2015 Futures Commission, developing the Utah Bar’s online interactive directory of lawyers, working to establish Utah’s Access to Justice Commission, and serving on the Supreme Court’s task forces for Licensed Paralegal Practitioners, and reform of Utah’s attorney discipline system.
Mr. Lund brings a wealth of knowledge and experience as the Chair of the LSI Committee.
Nathanael Player
LSI Committee Vice Chair
Nathanael Player is the director of the Utah State Courts’ Self-Help Center and Law Library. He serves on numerous committees to increase access to justice for the people of Utah within the court system and as a part of the larger legal community. Before joining the courts, Mr. Player represented low-income tenants facing eviction for seven years in San Francisco and Washington, D.C. As the supervising attorney of a legal clinic in San Francisco, he oversaw the litigation of hundreds of eviction cases, managed eleven attorneys, and helped to establish a trial program, filling a gap in the city’s legal services. He also managed data collection efforts to document the impact of the program and to articulate the need for more funding for trial work. Mr. Player also supervised the drafting of two data-driven reports on the state of evictions in San Francisco, which were instrumental in passing amendments to buttress the city’s tenant protections.
Lucy Ricca
LSI Committee Member
Lucy Ricca is the director of Policy and Programs at the Center on the Legal Profession at Stanford Law School. For the past decade, Ms. Ricca has been immersed in the movement to reform legal profession regulation to increase innovation, market diversification, and access to justice.
She was a member of the task force which conceptualized and implemented the regulatory reform project in Utah and a Special Project Advisor at the Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System (“IAALS”) on the Unlocking Legal Regulation project. Ms. Ricca served as the Executive Director of the Deborah L. Rhode Center on the Legal Profession from 2013 – 2018 and lectured at Stanford Law School. She has written on the regulation of the profession, the changing practice of law, and diversity in the profession.
Ms. Ricca clerked for Judge James P. Jones of the United States District Court for the Western District of Virginia. Before clerking, Ms. Ricca practiced white collar criminal defense, securities, antitrust, and complex commercial litigation as an associate at Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe. Ms. Ricca received her B.A. cum laude in History from Dartmouth College and her J.D. from the University of Virginia School of Law.
You can view Ms. Ricca’s publications here.
Dr. Rebecca Sandefur
LSI Committee Member
Dr. Rebecca Sandefur is Professor in the School of Social and Family Dynamics at Arizona State University and a Faculty Fellow at the American Bar Foundation. She also serves on the IAALS Justice Needs Advisory Committee and the Executive Coordinating Committee of the the American Bar Foundation’s Study of After the JD.
Her research investigates access to civil justice from every angle — from how legal services are delivered and consumed, to how civil legal aid is organized around the nation, to the role of pro bono, to the relative efficacy of lawyers, nonlawyers and digital tools as advisers and representatives, to how ordinary people think about their justice problems and try to resolve them. Her current research includes the Community Needs and Services Study (CNSS), a community-sited, multi-method study of ordinary people’s experiences with civil justice problems and the resources available to assist them in handling those problems. Her work has been published in law reviews, edited volumes and peer-reviewed journals such as American Sociological Review, Work and Occupations, and Law and Society Review.
In 2013, Dr. Sandefur was The Hague Visiting Chair in the Rule of Law. In 2015, she was named Champion of Justice by the National Center for Access to Justice. In 2018, she was named a MacArthur Fellow for her work on inequality and access to justice. In 2020, she was awarded the Warren E. Burger Award by the National Center for State Courts. She is currently Editor of Law & Society Review.
Her past public service includes advising state access to justice commissions and service on the Right to Counsel Committee of the California Access to Justice Commission, the Research Advisory Board of the Civil Right to Counsel Leadership and Support Initiative, and the Sargent Shriver Civil Right to Counsel Evaluation Committee.
You can view Dr. Sandefur’s publications here.
Photo courtesy of MacArthur Foundation.
Ciriac Alvarez Valle
LSI Committee Member
Ciriac Alvarez Valle is passionate about advocating for children & family issues. She combines her personal and professional experience to build bridges in advocacy & bringing people together to shift policies. During her undergraduate and early career, she focused her efforts in community organizing for immigration reform and empowering the immigrant community. She continues to work in policy change by working with impacted communities.
Ciriac currently works as a Senior Policy Analyst at Voices for Utah Children. She graduated with a B.S. in Political Science and Sociology from the University of Utah. Her work at Voices for Utah Children is focused primarily on children’s health care and policies that impact immigrant families. She is a proud immigrant herself born in Cuernavaca Morelos, Mexico.
Lindsey Brandt
LSI Committee Member
Brandt became a Utah licensed paralegal practitioner, or LPP, in May 2022. She works alongside lawyers in a family and criminal law office in Lehi, UT. She has a master’s degree in public administration, with an emphasis in nonprofit work, and also volunteers at a free legal clinic.
Brandt wrote an article for the Bar Journal in January 2023. She is also the recipient of the Debbie Meyers Outstanding Community Service Award.
John H. Rees
LSI Committee Member
John is a shareholder at Strong & Hanni. He previously practiced at Callister Nebeker & McCullough and John Rees Law, PLLC. His practice focuses on intellectual property and corporate matters. He currently serves as a commissioner of the Utah State Bar, and previously served as a co-chair of the Utah State Bar Innovation in Law Practice Committee.
Christopher J. Martinez
LSI Committee Member
Christopher J. Martinez graduated from the University of Utah with a B.A. in English. In 2011, Mr. Martinez received his juris doctorate degree from the Mitchell Hamline University, School of Law. After returning home from school Mr. Martinez immediately began volunteering in the Legal Aid Family Law Clinic at the Matheson Courthouse. Shortly after, Mr. Martinez was hired at the clinic as a paralegal while he was preparing for the bar exam. After being admitted to the Utah Bar, he worked as a domestic relations staff attorney until 2022 when he was promoted to Domestic Relations Program Director, his current position.
Mr. Martinez was a student liaison for Lawyers Concerned for Lawyers, the Minnesota Bar’s employer assistance program from 2008-2011. In 2011 he joined Lawyers Helping Lawyers as a board member where he continues to serve. He was a committee member on the Committee on Resources for Self-represented Parties from 2014 through 2018. He has also had advocacy training with UCASA (Utah Coalition Against Sexual Assault), and USARA (Utah Support Advocates for Recovery Awareness).
Mr. Martinez grew up in Sandy, Utah and currently resides in Salt Lake City where he intends to raise his family. He can usually be found at Fit to Recover.
Alyson McAllister
LSI Committee Member
Alyson is the immediate Past-President of the Utah Association for Justice and a Past Chair of their Women’s Caucus. She serves on the Board of Governors for the UAJ and for the American Association for Justice. Alyson has served on several judicial committees, including her current service on the Rules of Professional Conduct Committee, the Model Utah Jury Instructions Committee (which she currently chairs), the Legal Services Innovation committee, and the Civil Committee for the Federal Court Local Rules of Civil Procedure.
She is frequently invited to lecture other lawyers at legal seminars on a variety of subjects, including civil rights, Utah’s legal sandbox, medical malpractice, litigation and trial strategies and other personal injury topics. She also regularly serves as a mentor to new lawyers admitted to the Utah State Bar.
Megan Connelly
LSI Committee Member
Megan was named the Utah State Bar’s Access to Justice Director in December 2023. She brings over a decade of experience in social impact work to the position. Megan held previous roles in legal services, higher education, nonprofits, and philanthropy with a focus on issues of equitable community and economic development. She is a graduate of the University of Notre Dame and SUNY Buffalo Law School.
Nick Hafen
Recording Secretary
Nick Hafen is the Head of Legal Technology Education and leads the development of the Law School’s legal technology curriculum, including LawX and the Legal Technology Initiative. Nick also supports faculty members engaged in tech-related research and serves as faculty advisor for the Law, Innovation, Technology & Entrepreneurship (LITE) student organization.
Nick earned a J.D. at Brigham Young University and practiced bankruptcy and corporate law in private practice prior to joining the Law Library.
William Pelletiers
Staff - Senior Data Analyst
William Pelletiers is the Senior Data Analyst at the Office of Legal Services Innovation.
Pelletiers completed his Masters in Public Health at Yale University at his Bachelors of Arts in Public Health from Moravian College.