Staff
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Tom Gordon, Executive Director
Tom co-founded Responsive Law in 2010 and has been serving as its Executive Director since 2012. He has worked on behalf of consumers of legal services for over two decades, including several years as Senior Counsel and Policy Director at HALT. He has testified hundreds of times before state legislatures, federal administrative panels, state bars, and the American Bar Association. His commentary has been featured in national media, including the Wall Street Journal and USA Today, In 2017, Tom was named to the Fastcase 50 as one of "the law's smartest, most courageous innovators, techies, visionaries, and leaders." Tom received his JD from Northwestern University School of Law and his BA from the University of Pennsylvania. He is admitted to practice law in Maryland and the District of Columbia. |
Board of Directors
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Deno Himonas, President
Constandinos "Deno" Himonas was a justice of the Utah Supreme Court from 2015 to 2022, when he stepped down to join the law firm of Wilson Sonsini Goodrich and Rosati. As a justice, he led the Court’s establishment of the nation's first regulatory sandbox for legal service providers, which allows innovative business models for legal service delivery to serve consumers. Among his accolades, Deno has been named a "Legal Rebel" by the American Bar Association and has received the Judicial Excellence award from the Utah State Bar, and the Rebuilding Justice Award from the Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System. Before his appointment to the Utah Supreme Court, Deno served as a trial court judge for 11 years and a litigator in private practice for 15 years. He received his JD from the University of Chicago and his BA from the University of Utah. |
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Sara Akbar
Sara Akbar is a seasoned government affairs professional with over a decade of experience advocating for the tech industry. She is currently the head of Government Affairs for Recorded Future, the world's largest intelligence company with complete coverage across adversaries, infrastructure and targets. She was Director of Government Relations for Oracle, covering a range of public policy issues from education, workforce and immigration to procurement. Prior to her work as a tech advocate, she was a contract and business development specialist for information technology firms. Ms. Akbar is a Washington, DC area native. She earned a BA in International Relations from American University and a MA in Public Policy from the University of Maryland. She also sits on the board of the Women’s High-Tech Coalition and the Emergent Leaders Network. |
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Sonja Ebron
Sonja Ebron is chief executive and cofounder at Courtroom5, an automated legal toolbox for pro se civil litigants handling complex claims. She is a PhD electrical engineer and former college professor with a background in utilities and artificial intelligence. Sonja has represented herself in court many times and has made it a personal mission to empower others in their pro se litigation experiences. She serves on the Leaders Council of the Legal Services Corporation, the nation's primary funding source for legal aid programs. |
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Sally Greenberg
Sally Greenberg has been Executive Director of the National Consumers League since 2007. Sally has testified numerous times before Congress on consumer protection issues, including on product safety, fraud, excessive fees on car rentals, consumer rip-offs in calling cards and in support of protections for farmworker children.
Sally came to NCL from Consumers Union, where she worked from 1997-2007 on product liability and food safety issues, along with auto and product safety. Previously, she worked at the U.S. Department of Justice Foreign Claims Settlement Commission and prior to that, she spent a decade serving as the Eastern States Civil Rights Counsel for the Anti-Defamation League. Sally started her career as a legislative correspondent for Senator Gaylord Nelson (D-WI). She went on to spend four years as legislative assistant for Congressman Toby Moffett (D-CT). Sally was president of the Women’s Bar Association of Massachusetts and the Women’s Bar Foundation, and served on several gubernatorial commissions in Massachusetts. She also served for many years on the board of directors of the Alliance for Justice. She is a member of the Reagan-Udall Foundation Board, a nonprofit established by Congress to support the mission of the FDA and help equip the agency with the highest caliber regulatory science and technology. She also serves on the board of the Keystone Center, which helps leaders in health, energy, environment and education battle contentious issues with a consensus-based approach. Sally also served for over a decade on the board of directors of Trillium Asset Management. |
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Richard S. Granat
Richard S. Granat is the Co-Chair of the eLawyering Task Force of the American Bar Association’s Law Practice Management Section and Founder/CEO of DirectLaw, Inc., a virtual law firm platform provider to solos and small law firms, and Founder/CEO of SmartLegalForms, Inc. Richard created the first virtual law firm in Maryland in 2003, which was the foundation for DirectLaw, Inc., and was the founder of The People’s Law Library of Maryland, a state-wide legal information resource for Maryland’s citizens. He also serves on the ABA’s Standing Committee on the Delivery of Legal Services and is a Fellow in the College of Law Practice Management. Richard has been involved in developing innovative legal services delivery systems for over 30 years, first as part of the initial working group that created the National Legal Services Program, then as Director of the Center for Legal Studies at Antioch Law School in Washington, D.C., the nation's first clinical law school, and later as President and Dean of the Philadelphia Institute for Paralegal Training, the nation's first paralegal school. Richard was named a "Legal Rebel" by the American Bar Association Journal in 2009, and was awarded the Louis M. Brown Lifetime Achievement Award for Innovation in the Delivery of Legal Services in 2010. In 2013, he received the American Bar Association’s James Keane Award for Excellence in eLawyering. |
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Josh King
From 2007 to 2018, Josh was the Chief Legal Officer for Avvo, the web’s largest and most heavily-trafficked consumer legal destination. At Avvo, he was responsible for Avvo's legal, government relations, and customer service functions, and spoke and advocated frequently on interactive media and professional ethics issues. Prior to joining Avvo in 2007, Josh spent over a decade in the wireless industry, in a mix of legal and non-legal roles including Vice President, Corporate Development at AT&T Wireless and General Counsel for Cellular One of San Francisco. Josh is a graduate of the University of California Hastings College of the Law and the University of Oregon. |
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Fritz Mulhauser
Fritz Mulhauser was a staff attorney for 22 years with the ACLU affiliate in Washington, DC, where he specialized in litigation and policy advocacy concerning police misconduct and law enforcement use of technology, as well as speech, assembly and due process rights of students. With years of experience using public records access tools as part of advocacy and litigation, he serves on the board of the DC Open Government Coalition, where he co-chairs the Legal Committee and blogs for their website on Freedom of Information, open meetings, and open data issues in the government of Washington, DC. As a board member of the DC Council for Court Excellence, Fritz has begun a project to make DC a leader in online access to court records. He has been active in advocating for access to justice reforms through the DC Bar Section on Courts, Lawyers & the Administration of Justice which he chaired for several terms. Fritz earlier worked on a committee staff in the House of Representatives, led evaluation and policy research at the GAO and served on the founding staff of the U.S. National Institute of Education in the executive branch. Fritz holds a BA from Harvard and a JD from Georgetown. |
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Chas Rampenthal
Chas Rampenthal served as General Counsel and Head of Industry Relations at online legal document provider LegalZoom from 2003 to 2021. Before joining LegalZoom, he was a partner at Belanger and Rampenthal, LLC, and an associate at Testa, Hurwitz & Thibeault, LLP of Boston, Massachusetts and the Los Angeles office of Thelen Reid & Priest LLP. Chas also served as an officer and aviator in the United States Navy. He is the former host of "Legally Bound," a weekly legal call-in advice talk show in Los Angeles. He received a B.S. in Economics and Math Studies from Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville and a J.D. from the University of Southern California. |
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Jayne R. Reardon
Jayne is the former Executive Director of the Illinois Supreme Court Commission on Professionalism, one of the premier professionalism organizations in the country. Since stepping away from the Commission, Jayne has sharpened her advocacy for reform in the practice of law as well as for conflict resolution through arbitration or mediation. She has been active in numerous bar association committees and task forces on the changing practice of law, including the ABA’s Standing Committee on the Protection of the Public in the Provision of Legal Services and the Association of Professional Responsibility Lawyers Future of Lawyering Committee. Jayne has been widely recognized for her leadership, including by selection as a 2021 ABA Legal Rebel and as a member of the 2020 Women of Legal Tech and the 2019 Fastcase 50. Jayne received a J.D. from the University of Michigan Law School and a bachelor’s from the University of Notre Dame. |