Lourdes Ortiz
“The community that I have found through the William Wayne Justice Center is truly inspiring. I know I can always count on the support of the Justice Center faculty, staff, and students. Through participation in student groups, I get my peers’ insights into the fields that I would like to try. The faculty and staff at the Justice Center provide mentorship and guidance. I am excited to continue to grow into the legal profession at Texas Law."
Lourdes (Lulú) Ortiz is an associate at Cleveland Krist, a litigation firm in Austin that handles complex commercial cases. Immediately after law school, Lulú served as a law clerk to Judge Robert Pitman of the United States District Court for the Western District of Texas in Austin. After the clerkship, she worked briefly as a staff attorney in the legal clinic at Casa Marianella, a homeless shelter in Austin dedicated solely to immigrants.
At Texas Law, Lulú participated in the Justice Center student advisory board, Public Defense Group, and Public Interest Law Association (PILA). She was an articles editor for the Texas Law Review and the education chair for the Chicano/Hispanic Law Students’ Association (CHLSA). As a 1L, Lulú participated in the Mithoff Pro Bono Program helping community members expunge criminal records and traveling to an immigration detention center to help detainees apply for asylum. As a 2L, she served as a Mithoff Pro Bono Scholar assisting with immigration related projects, as a board member for PILA, and was a co-organizer for GRITS (the Getting Radical in the South conference).
The summer after her 1L year, Lulú worked with the Legal Aid Society of New York in its criminal practice. The summer after her 2L year, she worked with the ACLU's Immigrants' Rights Project in New York.
Lulú graduated from Yale University with a BA in Sociology. After a year doing research in El Salvador, she worked in El Paso, TX, as an immigration paralegal for Diocesan Migrant and Refugee Services and Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center. Later, she worked for the National Bail Fund Network on immigration bond issues and was part of the team for Fronterizx Fianza Fund, a community bond fund in El Paso.