Erin Gaines
"Through the Equal Justice Scholarship, I was immediately welcomed by students, faculty, and staff dedicated to public interest law at Texas Law. That community played an indispensable role my entire time in law school - inspiring, mentoring, and supporting me. In addition, the Equal Justice Scholarship offered me a rare opportunity to explore my passions and creatively envision my public service career unencumbered by a large debt."
Erin Gaines is a clinical professor in the Environmental Clinic at The University of Texas School of Law. She previously served as a supervising senior attorney at Earthjustice, where she represented frontline communities and nonprofit organizations challenging oil, gas, and petrochemical expansion in Texas and along the Gulf Coast. Before joining Earthjustice, she spent more than six years with Texas RioGrande Legal Aid’s community development team, advocating for safe housing in underserved Gulf Coast communities and addressing industrial health and safety hazards. Her first two years with the organization were supported by an Equal Justice Works Fellowship. After graduating from law school, Erin clerked for Judge Gregg Costa during his transition from the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.
At Texas Law, Erin participated in the Transnational Worker Rights Clinic, the Entrepreneurship and Community Development Clinic, and the Environmental Clinic, and was an associate editor of the Texas Law Review, a Teaching Quizmaster, and president of the Public Interest Law Association, as well as an active participant in the Justice Center’s student advisory board. During the summers, she interned with the Farmers’ Legal Action Group in Saint Paul, Minnesota, and California Rural Legal Assistance in Salinas, California.