He earned two Emmy Awards and the DGA award for Outstanding Direction of a Drama Series for NYPD Blue, received seven additional Emmy nominations for both producing and directing, and garnered ten other DGA Award nominations for shows as diverse as Glee, In Treatment, The West Wing, and House. He was nominated this year for the “Silenced” episode of Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story. He was inducted into the NAACP Image Awards Hall of Fame in 2014.

A DGA member since 1992, Barclay was the first African-American and openly gay President in the Guild’s history. He was honored with the Robert B. Aldrich Achievement Award in 2007, which is given for providing extraordinary service to the DGA, and in 2021 was given the Honorary Life Member Award, the Guild’s highest honor for both service and career achievement. He currently serves as the Guild’s Secretary/Treasurer.

Most recently, Paris helmed episodes of AMERICAN SPORTS STORY: AARON HERNANDEZ, MONSTERS: THE ERIK AND LYLE MENENDEZ STORY and THE NIGHT AGENT. He also directed the pilot and executive produced DOCTOR ODYSSEY for ABC, starring Joshua Jackson and Don Johnson.

He also directed, co-wrote and produced a feature documentary about the famed musician Billy Preston, with interviews from Ringo Starr, Eric Clapton, and Olivia Harrison among others.

Along with his industry honors, Paris has spent his entire career using stories to combat intolerance, support diverse families, and fight for social justice. This has led him to be honored by the aforementioned Liberty Hill, the Human Rights Campaign, GLAAD, Project Angel Food, the Pan African Film Festival, Extraordinary Families, and the Aviva Family and Children Services organization.

The proud parent of two adopted boys with his husband Christopher, his motto is: “What is the point of success if you don’t give back?”

In pro bono cases, he was co-lead counsel in Williams v. California, which added resources and improved accountability for public K through 12 schools statewide in California, as well as other impact cases on public education in California and other states. He was the lead trial lawyer in Doe v. Mayorkas, which resulted in a permanent injunction protecting decent conditions in detention facilities of the Border patrol in Southern Arizona. He defeated efforts to deny public funding to National Center for Youth Law because of its abortion-related work. He has led many more impact cases and hundreds of individual service pro bono cases.  

Since 2019, Jack has served as the volunteer Executive Director of the California Access to Justice Commission, of which he was the Chair in 1999. In that position, he has developed a Loan Repayment Assistance Program for legal aid lawyers and staff and led other innovative projects. He was Co-Chair of the National Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law in 1996-1997, led Californians for Legal Aid in 1995 (defending public funding for legal aid organizations), was President of the Consortium for the National Equal Justice Library, and has held many positions on nonprofit boards and committees of the American Bar Association. He was, for many years, president of the Board of Directors of the Public Interest Clearinghouse (now OneJustice). He testified before both the House and Senate on issues affecting the Legal Services Corporation. In 2015‑2016, he served part-time as a policy consultant to the Office of the Secretary of the United States Department of Education.   

Jack received his A.B. from Harvard College in 1971 and graduated from Yale Law School in 1975.