Richard Kyle Paisley is a practicing lawyer, the Director of the Andrew R. Thompson Natural Resources Law Programme at the Faculty of Law, and a member of the Westwater Research Center at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. His current research, teaching, legal practice and publishing interests are in the area of national and international natural resources law and policy, including national and international water law and policy, international environmental law, negotiation and environmental conflict resolution.

He is currently an advisor on these subjects to, among others, the Mekong River Commission Secretariat (MRCS) in Phnom Penh, Cambodia; the Water and Energy Commission Secretariat (WECS) in Kathmandu, Nepal; the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) of the United Nations in Rome, Italy; El Colegio de Mexico, in Mexico City, Mexico; the Brace Water Resources Management Institute at McGill University, in Montreal, Quebec; the British Columbia Salmon Farmers Association and the Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (DFAIT).

His academic background includes graduate degrees from the London School of Economics (LL.M.) in London, England, the Pepperdine University School of Law (J.D.) in Malibu, California and the Institute for Marine Studies at the University of Washington (M.Sc.) in Seattle, Washington. He also holds a B.Sc. degree from the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada.