Jeffrey L. Falt

Jeffrey L. Falt is an attorney with a Bachelor’s Degree, a Master’s Degree and a Doctor of Jurisprudence from the University of California at Berkeley. Following a stint as a legal aid attorney in rural California, he turned to human rights law, court reform and access to justice for marginalized communities in developing countries with The Asia Foundation, Amnesty International, the American Bar Association, USAID and numerous other international organizations in Africa, Asia and Latin America. At the behest of the United States Department of State, Jeffrey monitored and assessed a treason trial instigated by Liberian strongman Charles Taylor. During the UN mandate in East Timor, he proposed ways to strengthen the outreach of the local bar association. In Nepal, he explored peace strategies while the Maoist rebellion had nearly surrounded Kathmandu. In Sri Lanka, Jeffrey helped monitor a fragile ceasefire in rebel-held areas during the Tamil uprising, researched and designed a national legal aid system for the country and assessed human rights conditions. He headed a human rights and law project in Cambodia. With an armed escort, Jeffrey and his brother were among the first foreign visitors to Angkor Wat while the Khmer Rouge still roamed the countryside and mined the temples. Jeffrey taught at the Graduate Program in Pacific Basin Studies at Dominican University in California. His journal article, “Legal Aid and the Empowerment of the Poor in Developing Countries” became a teaching tool and a call to action. Jeffrey met Oyungerel in 2000 while on a peaceful assignment in Mongolia. They married in 2004. They live together in Ulaanbaatar where they are hard at work on the sequels to The Green-Eyed Lama.