Category: Student Life

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.

Six graduating students at the University of Texas School of Law have been honored by the William Wayne Justice Center for Public Interest Law for their extraordinary commitment during Law School to using the law to serve others.

Stanley Johanson, James A. Elkins Centennial Chair in Law, and law student Kathryn (“Katy”) Hutchinson, ’11, of the University of Texas at Austin have been awarded the 2011 Texas Exes Teaching Awards.

OUTLaw, the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) law student group at the University of Texas School of Law, hosted a legal advocacy conference at the Law School’s Eidman Courtroom on April 15, 2011. The LBGT Legal Advocacy Conference covered legal issues that are pertinent to the LGBT community in the areas of employment discrimination, gay marriage and divorce, and family law (including assisted reproductive technology and adoption). Video from the conference is available now.