Conference Convenors

Professor Alan Paterson

Alan Paterson is a Professor of Law and former Chairman of Strathclyde University Law School, Scotland.

He is the Chair of the International Legal Aid Group and has co-organised the first three conferences of the Group in The Hague (1995), Edinburgh (1997) and Vancouver (1999). Along with Professor Fleming he is the co-organiser of the Melbourne convention.

Professor Paterson also chairs the Legal Aid and Legal Services Group of the International Working Group on Comparative Legal Professions. He is the chair of the Legal Services Group of Citizens Advice Scotland. Currently he serves as research advisor to the Scottish Legal Aid Board and to the Scottish Executive's Working Group on Community Legal Services. He is also the Scottish consultant on the Nuffield Foundation funded project on Access to Justice in Scotland.

Educated at Edinburgh and Oxford Universities and qualified as a solicitor in Scotland, he has published numerous articles on legal aid and legal services.

Professor Don Fleming

Don Fleming is a Professor of Law at the University of Canberra, Australia.

Previously he was Principal Researcher for the Commonwealth National Legal Advisory Committee, and the author of its two reports, Funding, Providing, and Supplying Legal Aid Services (1989), and Legal Aid for the Australian Community (1990). He has also worked as a lawyer in private, public, and community practice, and has a long-term interest in legal aid, beginning with the Monash University Student Legal Referral Service in 1971-72.

Don Fleming was educated in Melbourne, and subsequently studied at Monash University, the University of Melbourne, and the Australian National University. He has been a member of ILAG since its inception in 1992.