Joshua McClain
“I am excited to be a part of the Texas Law community because I believe the law is critical to understanding and addressing inequities. I am particularly interested in disparities in access to a safe and healthy environment. As a state on the front lines of both creating and responding to climate catastrophes, Texas is a powerful place to pursue an education on that topic. As summers get hotter, water gets scarcer, hurricanes become more unpredictable, and industrial pollution concerns continue unabated, Texas is grappling with climate-driven environmental challenges every year. I can think of no better place, and no better group of peers and teachers, to help me learn how the law can be used to support communities in becoming more whole, resilient, and equitable.”
Josh McClain is a member of the Justice Center's student advisory board, the Public Interest Law Association, and Law Students for Black Lives. As a 1L, he was part of the team organizing the 2023 GRITS (Getting Radical in the South) conference and volunteered for the Mithoff Pro Bono Program's Gender Affirmation Project and Driver's License Recovery Project. As a 2L, he participates in the Environmental Clinic, works as a Teaching Quizmaster for the 1L writing program and as a teaching assistant for Professor Teddy Rave's Civil Procedure class, and serves on the executive boards of the Environmental Law Society and GRITS.
The summer after his 1L year, Josh worked with Texas RioGrande Legal Aid's Community Development and Environmental Justice Teams in Edinburg, Texas. The summer after his 2L year, he will work with the Southern Environmental Law Center in its Chapel Hill, North Carolina office.
Josh graduated from Kenyon College with a degree in political science and is pursuing dual JD/Master of Public Affairs degrees from Texas Law and the LBJ School of Public Affairs. At the LBJ School, which he attended for a year before starting law school, Josh worked at the newly launched Prison and Jail Innovation Lab, researching conditions of confinement and correctional oversight.
Immediately before moving to Austin for graduate school, Josh worked as a paralegal for Legal Aid of North Carolina’s Disaster Relief Project in Durham, North Carolina, assisting clients in eastern part of the state navigate the long-term hurricane recovery process. After completing the dual degree program, he plans to work directly with communities impacted by natural disasters and, eventually, to help craft law and policy to respond to a world where disasters are more frequent, forceful, and unpredictable.