Jessica Bednarz is the Director of Legal Services and the Profession at IAALS, the Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System, where she leads the organization’s vision and strategy around innovation, regulation, reform, and evolution in the delivery of legal services and the legal profession. She joined IAALS in 2023 after eight years at The Chicago Bar Foundation, where her work spanned a wide range of access to justice issues — including oversight of the Justice Entrepreneurs Project (CBF’s legal incubator program), launching Legal Entrepreneurs for Justice in Colorado, staffing the Chicago Bar Association and Chicago Bar Foundation Task Force on the Sustainable Practice of Law and Innovation (focused on regulatory reform), and developing practitioner resources including the CBF Pricing and Limited Scope Representation Toolkits. Before the CBF, Jessica was in private practice as a family law attorney, both as a solo practitioner and as an associate at O’Connor Family Law, P.C. She also served as MCLE Coordinator for the Chicago Bar Association and as a consultant for the Colorado Bar Association. She holds a J.D. and family law certificate, cum laude, from DePaul University College of Law and a B.S. from the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University.