Five Texas Law graduates from the Class of 2024 and one alumna from the Class of 2023 have earned coveted postgraduate fellowships to support their projects with state and national public interest organizations where they will help individuals who otherwise might not have access to legal representation or the justice system.
These fellowships allow graduates to perform project-specific work with a host organization for either a one- or two-year term.
These prestigious postgraduate fellowships are extremely competitive, and they honor our students’ hard work through law school and their bright futures as attorneys and leaders.”
Mary Murphy ’11, public interest career counselor
“We are immeasurably proud of our students’ dedication to social justice and public service,” says Mary Murphy ’11, public interest career counselor with the school’s Career Services Office. “These prestigious postgraduate fellowships are extremely competitive, and they honor our students’ hard work through law school and their bright futures as attorneys and leaders.”
The fellowship awards—including those from the Dorot Foundation, Equal Justice Works, and the Gallogly Family Foundation—are among the highest honors for recent law school graduates in the public interest arena.
“These honors reinforce what we already know: Texas Law graduates are exceptionally committed and prepared to make a difference,” says Nicole Simmons ’07, director of the school’s William Wayne Justice Center for Public Interest Law. “These new fellows will be amazing lawyers—it’s wonderful to see them launching their careers this way.”
Zoe Dobkin ’24 has received an Equal Justice Works Fellowship sponsored by the Texas Access to Justice Foundation to work with the nonprofit legal advice and advocacy organization Texas Legal Services Center in Austin. Dobkin will assist veterans by creating a medical-legal partnership between the center and the Austin VA Clinic, representing veterans in eviction and foreclosure cases and discharge upgrades, and helping veterans access financial security and with familial stability by supporting existing legal needs.
At Texas Law, Dobkin was vice president of communications for If/When/How: Lawyering for Reproductive Justice; a student attorney in the Transnational Worker Rights, Civil Rights, Housing Policy, and Housing Clinics; and was a Pro Bono Scholar for the Richard and Ginni Mithoff Pro Bono Program Expunction Project. During her 1L summer, Dobkin received a Peggy Browning Fellowship and interned at the nonprofit Sugar Law Center for Economic and Social Justice in Detroit. She has also interned at the Office of Capital and Forensic Writs in Austin.
Kate Gibson ’23 has received a fellowship from the Gallogly Family Foundation to work with the Beyond Borders team of the Texas Civil Rights Project in Austin. Gibson will focus on the nexus of immigration and labor rights—specifically on wage theft experienced by undocumented workers—by seeking to identify and assist workers who have experienced or reported labor law violations.
As a law student, Gibson was president of the Human Rights Law Society, submissions editor for the Texas International Law Journal, a “teaching quizmaster” legal writing teaching assistant, a Pro Bono Scholar with the Mithoff Pro Bono Program SPEAK project, and a participant in the Immigration Clinic. She previously worked with the American Civil Liberties Union’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, immigrant legal services nonprofit RAICES Children’s Program, the U.S. Department of Justice’s Immigration and Employee Rights Section of the Civil Rights Division, and clerked with Magistrate Judge Richard Farrer of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas.
Jamaal Lockings ’24 has earned a Dorot Fellowship and will work for the Alliance for Justice in Washington, D.C., where he will identify and contribute to research and reports on select nominees for federal courts. Lockings will monitor major cases at federal and state courts during his fellowship and track related legislation.
Before his graduation, Lockings served as president of the Student Bar Association, a member of both OUTLaw and the Thurgood Marshall Legal Society, a dean’s fellow in the Society Program, and a mentor for the Texas Law Pipeline Program. He was elected the permanent class president for the class of 2024 and delivered remarks on behalf of his fellow graduates at this year’s Sunflower Ceremony.
Rylan Maksoud ’24 has received an Equal Justice Works Fellowship sponsored by Lisa Foster, co-executive director of the Fines and Fees Justice Center, and Alan Bersin, senior advisor at Covington & Burling LLP, to work with the Texas Fair Defense Project in Austin. Maksoud will represent people charged with “fine-only” criminal offenses that are not punishable by jail time yet routinely result in low-income Texans, without a lawyer, being arrested, incarcerated, and subjected to punitive conditions.
Before he graduated from Texas Law, Maksoud founded the Texas Middle Eastern and North African Law Students’ Association and represented clients with the Criminal Defense Clinic. During his summers, Maksoud interned with the Law Office of Dennis Hunsberger PLLC and the Texas Fair Defense Project.
Nikita Mhatre ’24 will work as a U.S. litigation fellow at the Center for Reproductive Rights in Washington, D.C., assisting with all aspects of the center’s U.S. litigation.
At Texas Law, Mhatre worked at the Rapoport Center for Human Rights as a Sissy Farenthold Scholar in Reproductive Justice; served as co-president of If/When/How; and was a staff editor on the Texas Journal on Civil Liberties & Civil Rights. She also participated in the Civil Rights Clinic. During her summers, Mhatre interned with the nonprofit NARAL Pro-Choice America (now Reproductive Freedom for All) in Washington, D.C., and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of General Counsel in Chicago.
Crystal Tran ’24 has received an Equal Justice Works Fellowship sponsored by Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP to work at the Austin-based law advocacy organization Texas Appleseed. She will observe and represent K-12 students in civil truancy proceedings in major metropolitan cities around Texas.
During her time as a law student, Tran was involved in Law Students for Black Lives, the annual social justice orientation Change It Up!, the student-led Getting Radical in the South conference, and the Public Interest Law Association. She also served as an editor of the Texas Journal on Civil Liberties & Civil Rights, participated in the Civil Rights Clinic, and was a Pipeline Scholar with the Texas Law Pipeline Program. She previously worked at Texas Appleseed, the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas, the Southern Coalition for Social Justice in Durham, North Carolina, and as a legislative aide to Texas State Senator Nathan Johnson.