Richard Boyce Olver

Richard Olver is a partner at Anderson Olver where he works as an immigration lawyer. Richard’s practice has a special focus on a variety of family-based and employment-based issues faced by diplomatic and expatriate clients and their dependents and extended families, both in the United States and around the world. Richard’s practice includes asylum cases; other removal proceedings such as those based on criminal convictions or denied applications for adjustment of status, as well as a range of applications for both non-immigrant visas and permanent residence. Richard also assists clients in citizenship matters.

Richard is admitted to the bar in New York and Kentucky. He is a member of the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA), the New York Bar Association, the Kentucky Bar Association, and the Westchester County Bar Association.

Richard received his J.D. in 1974 from Harvard Law School, where he served as an officer of the Harvard Prison Legal Assistance Program, and was awarded a Reginald Heber Smith Community Lawyer Fellowship. Following law school, Richard worked as a staff attorney for Northeast Kentucky Legal Services, before forming the firm of Cox & Olver in Morehead, KY. His practice was focused on the rights of individuals and communities, and he litigated significant issues in real property, consumer and environmental law, as well as numerous benefit, family and criminal law cases. He later served as the Rowan County, KY prosecutor.

Richard is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Haverford College, where he earned a B.A. in Political Science, with a concentration in the politics and history of the third world. He was raised as an expatriate, having grown up in France, Switzerland, Italy and Libya, as well as in Westchester County, New York.

In 1981 Richard joined the United Nations Development Program. He served as a UN staff member for twenty-six years, in a number of increasingly senior positions in Sri Lanka, Sierra Leone, Samoa and Guyana, as well as at headquarters, including ultimately as UN Resident Coordinator. He has negotiated with national governments and international partners in over eighty countries, and has supported the work of the UN in over one hundred and fifty member states. While in the UN he developed global expertise in issues around diplomatic privileges and immunities, the rights and conditions of service of international civil servants, and expatriate benefits and conditions of service. He served as global chair of the UNDP/UNFPA Staff Association, and as a member of the UN Claims Board and the UNDP Rebuttal Panel. He is a lifetime member of the Association of Former International Civil Servants.

Since 2007, Richard has served a global roster of clients, on every continent. He has advised a broad range of international and multilateral organizations, political and peacekeeping missions in conflict zones, and regional economic unions. Areas of work have included management systems, policies and conditions of service for expatriate and local hire employees, human resource strategies and organizational structures. He also conducts capacity assessments, comparative advantage analyses and evaluations, and develops strategies for United Nations Country Teams.