Change-oriented legal services

In 1986, the year I started law school at the National University in Colombia, Fernando Rojas, one of the brighteners Colombian intellectuals I have ever met, was a fellow at the Institute for Legal Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. During that fellowship Rojas published a paper that would become very influential among progressive lawyers in Latin America and helped to take shape to this new movement. The paper was entitled: “A comparison of change-oriented legal services in Latin America with legal services in North America and Europe.” In 1987, Rojas institutionalized a small research project called the Inter-American Legal Services Association (ILSA) and transformed it into a very dynamic NGO, and become his Executive Director. I connected with ILSA immediately and I was an avid reader of all their publications. A few years later, in 1990, I was hired by ILSA as one of its researchers. That experience changed my life for ever.