This article intends to analyze the process of the institutional construction of the Public Defender's Office of the State of Rio de Janeiro. It discusses the change from an office designed to deal with individual legal questions to an institution for the de-fense of wide-ranging individual and collective rights. The autonomy from the Executive Branch and the existence of institu-tional guarantees close to the Judiciary and to the Public Prosecution Service characterizes this new institutional model. This new model takes place in the context of the expansion of the presence of rights in Brazilian society due to the strengthening of the democratic principles of the 1988 Federal Constitution.
access to Justice; organizational innovation; public advocacy