John
Greacen

John Greacen
Principal, Self-Represented Litigants Network

After a distinguished career as a court administrator in the federal and state courts – managing both trial and appellate courts and serving as Director of the New Mexico Administrative Office of the Courts, Mr. Greacen has spent the past twenty years consulting on many topics for courts in 35 states and 4 foreign countries. Mr. Greacen received the National Association for Court Management Award of Merit in 1999, the OASIS Distinguished Contributor Award in 2013, the Ernest J. Friesen Award from the Justice Management Institute in 2017, and the Meyer Elkin Essay Award from the Association of family and Conciliation Courts in 2020. Mr. Greacen is Project Consultant to the Self-Represented Litigation Network and Special Projects Advisor to the Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System. He was consultant to the Pew Charitable Trust for its development of an access to civil justice funding program in 2017. He served as consultant to the Legal Services Corporation in 2012-13 planning and facilitating its Summit on the Use of Technology to Enhance Access to Justice and drafting the Summit Report, which first articulated the goal of “providing some form of effective assistance to 100% of persons with essential civil legal needs” which the LSC Board incorporated into its mission statement, the Conference of Chief Justices and Conference of State Court Administrators adopted as an aspirational goal for all state courts in its Resolution 5 in 2015 and motivated the Public Welfare Foundation to initiate the Justice for All initiative to make the goal a reality, now underway in 14 states. He is best known for his 1995 article on how court staff can distinguish legal information from legal advice. His most recent publication is Eighteen Ways Courts Should Use Technology to Better Serve Their Customers, issued by the Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System in late 2018.