Senior Staff
Administration
Executive Director
Gary Housepian is a graduate of Houghton College and a 1977 graduate of the University of Detroit Law School. He became Executive Director of LAS in July 2007. From 2002 to 2007 he was Managing Attorney of the Disability Law and Advocacy Center of Tennessee (the state’s protection and advocacy program). From 1997 to 2001 he was managing attorney with LAS’s Murfreesboro office. He has also worked as a trial attorney in private practice and as the General Counsel to the Tennessee Department of Mental Health and Mental Retardation and then as General Counsel to the Tennessee Department of Human Services. He has worked as a staff attorney with the Tennessee Justice Center, the Legal Aid Society in Knoxville and as a VISTA attorney with Legal Services to Migrant Farm Workers in El Mirage, Arizona. He has served as a Hearing Committee Member for the Board of Professional Responsibility and as Chair of the Board of the Tennessee Alliance for Legal Services. He has received many awards and recognitions, including the Arc of Tennessee Outstanding Community Leadership Award in 2005. He is a Fellow of the Nashville Bar Foundation. He is also a member of the Tennessee Supreme Court’s Access to Justice Commission’s Resource Development Committee. His interests include playing basketball and softball and following the Detroit Red Wings and Tigers.
General Counsel
Neil McBride is a 1970 graduate of the University of Virginia Law School. He worked as a staff attorney with Ralph Nader in Washington, D.C. In 1972 he formed a community-based public interest law firm in Tennessee’s Appalachian coal fields. In 1978 he founded and became director of Rural Legal Services of Tennessee, a position he held until consolidation with the Legal Aid Society in 2002. He was lead counsel in a case before the Tennessee Supreme Court that clarified the constitutional rights of natural parents in termination proceedings. He was formerly an adjunct professor at the University of Tennessee College of Law, where he taught a course on representing nonprofit corporations. He has conducted on-site evaluations of more than 100 legal aid programs throughout the country. He is a Fellow of the Tennessee Bar Foundation, a member of the Board of Directors of the Tennessee Alliance for Legal Services and a member of the Tennessee Bar Association’s House of Delegates. From 2006 to 2010 he served on the American Bar Association’s Standing Committee on Legal Aid and Indigent Defense, the ABA’s primary policy-setting body on issues related to legal assistance to the poor. He served on the Tennessee Supreme Court’s Access to Justice Commission’s Court System Advisory Committee in 2010. He is a member of the Board of Directors of the Tennessee Valley Authority, a part-time, nonpartisan position appointed by the President, subject to confirmation by the U.S. Senate. His interests include hiking and swimming.
Assistant General Counsel
David Kozlowski is a 1974 graduate of Vanderbilt University Law School. He was a clinical instructor at the Vanderbilt Legal Clinic from 1975 to 1980, at which time he joined the Legal Aid Society. In 2001 he worked with the Tennessee Justice Center on several class action cases. In 2002 he became Assistant General Counsel to the Legal Aid Society. He has been lead counsel on many significant state and federal court decisions in Tennessee involving prisoner and juvenile rights and is one of the leading appellate court advocates in Tennessee. He is the author of leading reference works on Tennessee unemployment security law and chapters on juvenile and general sessions appeals in Tennessee Appellate Practice and Tennessee Law of Children. He is a frequent presenter at local, state and national training events. David received the Tennessee Bar Association’s award as the Public Service Attorney of the Year in 1998. In 2008 he was appointed to the Advisory Commission to the Supreme Court on Rules and Practice and Procedure. He was a hearing officer for the Board of Professional Responsibility from 2002 to 2008. He was for many years a certified high school soccer referee.
