Sarah Reynolds

Sarah Reynolds has over thirty years of experience in the development of laws and legal institutions, with a focus on assistance to countries making major transitions in their economic and legal systems. For the past two decades, she has conducted a legal and consulting practice working with public bodies on the development of a wide variety of laws and legal institutions, primarily, although not exclusively, in the countries of the former USSR and Eastern Europe. A significant amount of her work has focused on the legislative development of laws governing markets and market behavior, including the protection of competition and of consumers, and of the enforcement and dispute resolution mechanisms required for their function. Additional public sector work has included general consumer protection laws, bankruptcy laws, civil codes, procedural codes, legal and judicial education development, legislative drafting procedures, jury trial procedures and other topics. Sarah also advises private clients on the content and enforcement patterns of those laws.

Sarah has taught and published widely in her field. Prior to starting her own practice she served for a number of years as a lecturer and program director at Harvard Law School and then as a Senior Fellow at the Institute for East European Law at Leiden University. Other venues for courses and lectures have included the Russian Legal Academy (Moscow), Central European University (Budapest), and the University of World Economy and Diplomacy (Tashkent). She is a graduate of Harvard Law School, where she was an Editor of the Harvard Law Review, and of Bryn Mawr College, where she earned a B.A. in economics and Russian.

Sarah’s most recent projects in the public sector have included work with national/central banks in a number of jurisdictions to examine the needs of consumers of banking and other financial services and to develop effective financial consumer protection rules and standards.

As an Access to Justice Fellow, Sarah will continue her focus on consumer protection issues, working with Greater Boston Legal Services (GBLS) to seek greater protection for homeowners whose property tax debts have been sold to private parties and to identify opportunities to address the needs of GBLS clients through legislative change. The GBLS mission is to provide free legal assistance to as many low-income families as possible to help them secure some of the most basic necessities of life.