Student becomes the teacher.
By Christopher Roberts
Art by Paddy Mills
Brianna Terrell ’25, a fluent American Sign Language interpreter, was already one of the country’s foremost experts on legal protections for Deaf people in the U.S. court system when she arrived at Texas Law. Just before graduating this past spring, she also hit the international stage.
Terrell was nominated to present at a Taiwanese university conference by law professor Lucy Wood, director of Texas Law’s Disability Rights Clinic. The conference hosts wanted an expert versed in the American legal system and its protections for Deaf litigants.
Terrell had not only produced a senior capstone project at the University of Rochester on that very topic and written a law journal article on sign language interpreters and criminal proceedings, she’d also been working for years as an ASL interpreter, including in some cases for Wood’s clinic. Wood knew that Terrell’s practical experience and deep knowledge were far better than remarks any law professor might offer.
Her work is informed, insightful, and strategic.
Professor Lucy Wood
“Brianna knows her stuff,” says Wood. “Her work is informed, insightful, and strategic.” Last year, Terrell briefed a conference of 200 Taiwanese on American legal protections—actual and sometimes illusory—for Deaf litigants.
“Signed languages are wholly developed languages with distinct linguistic systems,” Terrell notes in her journal article. “[T]he lack of an interpreter in court produces the same result for both spoken or signed languages: the litigant cannot understand the proceeding.”
Terrell, a Coloradoan who became interested in ASL as a teenager, selected her college as one of the few places she could double major in Political Science and Deaf Studies. Rochester, in upstate New York, is home to one of the nation’s largest per-capita Deaf populations—just like Austin.
“The two things that brought me to Texas Law were the Texas School for the Deaf being nearby, and Professor Wood,” Terrell says.
Now a Texas Law alumna, Brianna Terrell is helping change the conversation for Deaf litigants—here in Texas and around the world.