A Conversation with Elisa Overall, 2026 Alli Gerkman Legal Visionary Award Recipient

Elisa “Emo” Overall, Executive Director of the Colorado Access to Justice Commission, is the recipient of the 2026 Alli Gerkman Legal Visionary Award, which recognizes innovators who have made significant impacts early in their legal careers toward making our legal system work better for everyone. Overall will be presented the award at IAALS’ Rebuilding Justice Award Dinner on April 23, 2026. Read ahead to learn more about Overall, and register now to attend the dinner. 

What drives your passion for access to justice?

Like most lawyers, I was drawn to lawyering because of its power to help people. But the inequity of the justice system is hard to miss; anyone without a lawyer is at a clear disadvantage in successfully using the justice system. I think most lawyers feel like they can’t possibly do anything about such a fundamentally flawed system. Or maybe they do pro bono work to do their part.

Access to justice work allows me to try, with varying degrees of success, to address that fundamental flaw. Because the issue is so intractable, it requires relentless innovation and stretching outside our comfort zones as professionals, sustained pressure against inertia and challenging assumptions, and meaningfully engaging scores of lawyers, non-lawyers, and users of the system. That’s just about the most interesting law job I can think of.

What aspect or moment in your career are you most proud of?

Codifying the Access to Justice Commission into Colorado law is a moment I’m very proud of. Not because it’s symbolic, but because it shifted power. It formalized a seat at the policy table for people focused on system users—not just system operators. We moved from asking to be heard to being statutorily embedded in the conversation. That changes how decisions get made.

What is your long-term vision for the broader access to justice movement?

My long-term vision is a justice system that treats users as clients, not problems. That means real feedback loops, consumer data driving reform, plain language as a baseline expectation, and regulatory structures that don’t default to protecting the profession over the public. I want to design a system that self-corrects because it listens—one that sees transparency and shared knowledge as democratic necessities instead of threats.

What is your favorite item on your desk and why?

My stack of yellow legal pads filled with notes of conversations. I take hand-written notes at every meeting I have. Every note represents someone’s perspective and the act of listening and taking note of it. At the end of the day, change doesn’t start with policy, it starts with listening. That’s the real north star for this work, and in a lot of ways, of who I am.

What does it mean for you to receive the Alli Gerkman Legal Visionary Award?

It means the work of building bridges—while still challenging the foundation—is being seen. I believe most leaders in our justice system care deeply; they’ve just inherited assumptions about the virtues of our justice system they’ve never had reason to question. This award affirms that you can be candid about structural inequity and still be invited into rooms of power. That’s where change becomes durable.

Which IAALS projects resonate with you the most?

Every time I learn more about an IAALS project, I realize IAALS’ fingerprints are all over my belief system and philosophy about this work, what I am waist-deep working on, or what I want us to work on next and then next after that. They are so many steps ahead of this work, leading the way even when we don’t realize it.

Most recently, the Uncomplicated Courts Initiative has been particularly inspiring. By focusing on high volume courts, they’ve set the perfect stage. In high-volume courts almost everyone is self-represented, so traditional judicial procedures are failing the courts. The inefficiencies are painfully felt by the operators of the system, many of whom they’ve invited to devise solutions. IAALS has created ideal conditions for judicial stakeholders to problem-solve and study the effectiveness of the solutions for both court users and for the courts as they are tested.

What’s the best trip you’ve ever been on?

I got to spend the summer before college in a very small village in northern Brazil as part of a humanitarian program. Despite my initial intentions, I quickly realized how basically useless I was as resources for the villagers. I instead experienced my first full-blown lesson in the humility that accompanies travel, especially when you can stay for a while. The village had no running water or electricity, but there was nothing unsophisticated about it. The women could weave a water-holding basket in a matter of minutes, make a dozen different foods from a coconut tree, and wash a load of laundry in the river before dawn. I learned so much that summer—though to be clear, I did not learn to do any of the above things—the most enduring of which was to lead with curiosity. The only acceptable assumption, even still, is that I know next to nothing in the grand scheme of things.

What trait do you most admire in others?

A healthy dose of stoicism. Everyone I know in this work, like me, feels deep empathy for people we don’t know and will never meet, but whose lives can be upended by the system’s failures. That empathy is essential, but it can become unbearably heavy. Most of us are deeply passionate about fairness, so the immensity of the justice gap can become overwhelming. I admire people who have an inner cache of stoicism, like baking soda, to neutralize the emotional weight of this work and allow them to focus on the solutions without being burnt up by the problems.

What’s your favorite way to spend a day off?

With no agenda! I’m in my element when my husband and I are doing tiny exploring and adventuring with our two small sons. Finding bugs while gardening, exploring rock piles in the mountains, building fortresses with Legos and magnet tiles. Right now, it’s the tiny things that mean the most to me.

What would you say to the next generation of innovators and legal visionaries?

Be bold about the problem and inclusive about the strategy. It’s not enough to critique the system. You have to understand it well enough to move it. Relationships matter. Trust really matters. If you can bring decision makers face-to-face with the lived realities of system users, they’ll start to see it themselves.