Category: Student Life

In anticipation of National Pro Bono Week (October 23–29), the Pro Bono Program is pleased to announce that the application for the 2012 Pro Bono in January trip will be available on Monday, October 24. Pro Bono in January is an annual winter break trip that gives law students the opportunity to engage in meaningful pro bono work in low-income communities. This year, the Pro Bono Program will take forty to fifty students as well as several faculty members to the Texas Rio Grande Valley, Laredo, and El Paso during the second week of January.

Three students at the University of Texas School of Law have been selected to receive Baron & Budd Public Interest Scholarships for the 2011–2012 academic year. Students who receive the $4,500 scholarships commit to working three hundred pro bono hours during the school year with a nonprofit organization providing legal services to underserved individuals or communities.

Bianca Garcia, ’12, has started her term as president of the Law School Division of the Hispanic National Bar Association, a national organization of law students that “encourages the participation of Latino students in developing and remaining responsive to the social, political, and academic promotion of the Latino/a community and to encourage and promote the recruitment, academic achievement, and retention of Latino/a law students.”

Six students have been selected to serve as Public Service Scholars for the 2011–2012 year with the William Wayne Justice Center for Public Interest Law at the University of Texas School of Law.

Law School students and alumni provided pro bono legal advice to victims of the recent wildfires in Central Texas. Hundreds of people in and near Bastrop, about thirty miles east of Austin, have lost their homes or experienced significant damages.

Usually the courts of last resort in federal cases, the Federal Courts of Appeals are widely misunderstood by the public, as is appellate practice generally. The American Bar Association is working to change that through a new project, a blog called “Media Alerts on Federal Courts of Appeals.” The ABA hopes to increase awareness and understanding of the Federal Courts of Appeals by expanding access to the work of those Courts. The University of Texas School of Law plays an important role in this project: students report on decisions issued by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.

UT Law’s Class of 2014 arrived August 22, 2011, for 1L Orientation and the beginning of classes. As usual, the incoming students are a diverse and accomplished group.

The University of Texas School of Law has awarded the seventh Equal Justice Scholarship to Cassandra McCrae, an incoming first-year law student. The scholarship covers tuition and fees for three years of legal study. McCrae has committed to working after law school on a full-time basis for three years providing direct legal services to low-income individuals or groups at a nonprofit organization in the United States.

Mary Murphy, ’11, has been awarded a Public Defender Corps fellowship. Her Fellowship project will be with the Orleans Public Defenders in New Orleans, Louisiana, a relatively new office that defends the poor and indigent in Orleans Parish.

Students at Austin’s Webb Middle School set up their own dispute resolution forum with the help of Law School students and professors.

Adriana Rodriguez, ’11, and Michelle Smith, ’11, have been awarded Equal Justice Works Fellowships to work for nonprofit legal organizations after their graduation.

Eight students from the University of Texas School of Law have been selected by the Bernard and Audre Rapoport Center for Human Rights and Justice as Rapoport Center Summer Fellows. They will fan out to nongovernmental and intergovernmental organizations in destinations as diverse as London; Washington, D.C.; and Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Their projects include building the legal capacity of marginalized groups, assisting in war crimes prosecutions, representing victims of family violence, increasing compliance with international human rights treaties, and advocating for the rights of low-income workers.