PLAIN2023
INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE
KEYNOTE SPEAKERS
Estrella Montolío Durán
Estrella Montolío is a Professor of Spanish Language at the Universitat de Barcelona (UB). She is the Director of the UB-Diputación de Barcelona Chair for clear communication applied to Administrations. She has directed and collaborated on numerous clear communication projects for the Ministry of Justice, the General Council of the Judiciary, the State Attorney General's Office, the Spanish Tax Administration Agency, the Spanish Agency for International Cooperation and Development, the town halls of Madrid and Barcelona (Generalitat de Catalunya), among others. She has also consulted for large companies, such as CaixaBank, Banco de Santander and Naturgy. The author of numerous specialized publications, she wrote the book "El derecho a entender. La comunicación clara, la mejor defensa de la ciudadanía" (with M. Tascón) and more recently the Guide to Clear Judicial Drafting for the Ministry of Justice. She has received numerous awards and distinctions for her work.
Michael Blasie
Michael Blasie is the leading U.S. expert on plain language laws. After 10 years as a trial lawyer and judicial law clerk, he serves as a law school professor. Michael’s book is the first to discover and categorize the design of hundreds of U.S. plain language laws. As a National Judicial College instructor, he trains judges how to write. He presents internationally, including in India, Turkey, and Uzbekistan. He attended New York University School of Law.
Karin Hansson
Karin Hansson has been working at Statistics Sweden since 2012 as their first plain language expert. 2019-2022 she also worked on various plain language and terminology projects at the Swedish Language Council. Karin has a BA in Swedish as well as a PhD in Modern Irish linguistics from Uppsala University and has taught Modern Irish grammar there.
Heloisa Fischer
Heloisa Fischer. Brazilian journalist and educator. Author the first book in Portuguese on public communication with the plain language perspective. In her Masters in Design, Heloisa researched the impact of writing style on the comprehensibility of digital public services. Her method of teaching plain language (Método Comunica Simples) has trained more than 40,000 professionals since 2019. Co-founder of the Brazilian Plain Language Network. Member of Clarity International. She serves at PLAIN’s board of directors.
Lorena Tula del Moral
Lorena Tula del Moral is an attorney who graduated from the Universidad de Buenos Aires (UBA), Argentina, with a specialization in Justice Administration (UBA). She continued her training at the Universidad de Salamanca, Spain, at the California Western School of Law in San Diego, USA, and at the Justice Studies Center of the Americas (JSCA-OAS) in Chile, among others. She is the Director of the Plain Language Observatory of the Faculty of Law of the UBA. She is a judge on the Criminal, Misdemeanors and Petty Offenses Court No. 13 in the City of Buenos Aires (CABA). She has participated as a speaker in different national and international congresses, workshops and conferences. She is the author of various publications, including the "Manual de lenguaje claro y estilo" (Plain Language and Style Manual) published by Editorial Jusbaires, and has contributed to the commentated version of the Criminal Procedure Code in CABA (Editorial Hammurabi), "Desde el poder judicial a la academia" for the Plain Language Observatory of the Faculty of Law of the UBA (Editorial Espasa), among others.
Joseph Kimble
Joseph Kimble taught legal writing for more than 30 years at WMU–Cooley Law School in Michigan, USA. He has written three books and scores of articles. He is the editor of legal-writing columns in the Michigan Bar Journal and Judicature, a senior editor of The Scribes Journal of Legal Writing, and a drafting consultant on all U.S. federal court rules. He has won many national and international awards for his work.
Helena Haapio
"Helena Haapio. Professor of Practice and Docent of Proactive Law and Contract Design at the University of Lapland | Associate Professor of Business Law at the University of Vaasa | Contract Strategist at Lexpert Ltd Helena Haapio is a pioneer of Proactive Law and contract design, a practitioner by day and an author and editor by night. Based in Helsinki, Finland, she works as a Contract Strategist at Lexpert Ltd. Helena is currently also a Professor of Practice and a Docent of Proactive Law and Contract Design at the University of Lapland and an Associate Professor of Business Law at the University of Vaasa. After completing legal studies at the University of Turku, Finland, and Cambridge University, England, Helena served for several years as in-house Legal Counsel in Europe and the United States. Her articles have appeared in several business and professional publications and her work on contract design and simplification has been recognized internationally. Helena was nominated as one of the “European Women of Legal Tech” in the category Academia & Education in 2020, and has also been awarded a honorary Fellowship by WorldCC, World Commerce & Contracting. Together with Stefania Passera, she created the WorldCC Contract Design Pattern Library. Helena has been actively involved in the development of the Nordic School of Proactive Law and of the ProActive ThinkTank and acted as Expert to the European Economic and Social Committee in preparing its Opinion on The proactive law approach published in the Official Journal of the EU in 2009. Helena is also a co-founder of the Legal Design Alliance and a co-author of its Legal Design Manifesto. Since her doctoral dissertation Next Generation Contracts: A Paradigm Shift (Lexpert 2013) Helena’s multi-disciplinary research focuses on ways to enhance the quality – especially functionality and usability – of contracts. Through a proactive approach, information design, visualization, and AI, she seeks to fundamentally change the way contracts are designed, communicated, perceived, and taught. Her recent research explores how AI-powered information design can help make contracts and law accessible to all, leading to better business and societal outcomes."
Martín Böhmer
Martin Böhmer is an attorney who graduated from the Universidad de Buenos Aires (UBA) and has a Master's (LLM) and Doctorate (JSD) in Law from Yale University (USA). A professor at the Faculty of Law of the UBA and at the Universidad Nacional de Río Negro, he is also the Principal Investigator of the Center for the Implementation of Public Policies for Equity and Growth (CIPPEC), Argentina.
Cheryl Tomas
Professor Cheryl Thomas KC is Professor of Judicial Studies at University College London (UCL), Director of the UCL Judicial Institute and UCL Jury Project and Dean of the Honourable Society of the Inner Temple. She holds the first Chair in Judicial Studies in the UK and is the first Dean of an Inn of Court in the 700-year history of the Inns. Professor Thomas is the UK’s leading expert on courts, judges and juries. She has pioneered the study of juries in the UK (including the landmark study Are Juries Fair?) and developed and runs the UK Judicial Attitude Survey, the only continuous survey of the working lives of judges in the world. Her academic career has been focused on law in practice, and includes extensive experience of training judges and lawyers in the UK and abroad. Within the UK Professor Thomas trains judges at the Judicial College of England and Wales, Scottish Judicial Institute and Northern Ireland Judicial Studies Board (courses on Trial Management; Long & Complex Cases; Serious Sexual Offences; Judgecraft; Working with Juries; Judicial Communications; Access to Justice). For the legal profession Professor Thomas has led Inner Temple’s development of a new model of ethics training for barristers; and during the Covid pandemic, she led the development of Inner Temple’s online advocacy, ethics and train the trainers courses. Internationally, she has advised and provided training for over 20 years to a wide range of jurisdictions in Europe, Africa and the Caribbean.