Jill Applegate

Jill Applegate is a supervising attorney for special litigation on the Immigration Defense Team at Neighborhood Defender Service. She previously served as a staff attorney and, before that, as a Skadden Fellow with the organization’s Harlem office. During her fellowship, she represented immigrants facing deportation because of criminal convictions and assisted individuals eligible to remain in the United States because of changes in the law or constitutional claims. After graduating from Texas Law, Jill clerked for U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman of the Western District of Texas.

At Texas Law, Jill participated in the Justice Center’s student advisory board and was an associate editor of the Texas Law Review, a two-year Teaching Quizmaster, and a research assistant for Professor Cary Franklin. As a 2L, she also served as co-president of the Public Interest Law Association and a co-organizer of GRITS (Texas Law's annual, student-led "Getting Radical in the South" conference).

Jill volunteered for several pro bono projects, including assisting immigrants at the T. Don Hutto Residential Center and the Karnes County Family Residential Center (both ICE detention facilities), and participated in the Immigration Clinic, Civil Rights Clinic, and Housing Clinic. She also interned with the Holistic Defense Team of the Capital Area Private Defender Service in Austin, focusing on immigration law issues.

The summer after her 1L year, Jill worked with the Detention Project at the National Immigrant Justice Center in Chicago. The summer after her 2L year, she worked with the Immigration Defense Practice at the Neighborhood Defender Service of Harlem. Jill is a class of 2021 Chancellor, one of sixteen law students who achieved the highest grade point averages in their class through their second year.

Before coming to law school, Jill worked at The DREAM Project in the Dominican Republic helping elementary school children apply for late registration of their births.