Mary Chisolm Rios

Scholar Judicial Clerkship Legal Aid Domestic Violence / Family
Class of 2015
Photo of Mary Chisolm Rios

Mary Chisolm Rios is a staff attorney with the Texas Legal Services Center in Austin where she practices family law. Previously, she was a wills and probate attorney with Texas RioGrande Legal Aid (TRLA) in Austin. She has also worked as a solo practitioner. Immediately after law school, she clerked for Judge Kathleen Cardone of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas in El Paso.

At Texas Law, Mary participated in the Immigration Clinic, Juvenile Justice Clinic, and Capital Punishment Clinic, and was executive editor of the Texas Journal of Women and the Law. She participated in the Pro Bono Program’s winter break trip to the Rio Grande Valley all three years and helped many high school students apply for DACA status through Texas Law pro bono clinics, completing over 460 pro bono hours while in law school. She worked in the summers for the South Texas Civil Rights Project in Alamo, Texas and the Center for Death Penalty Litigation in Durham, North Carolina.  She also interned in Austin with the Texas Defender Service, Judge Lee Yeakel of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas, and TRLA.