Sarah Mae Jennings
"My advice for incoming and current students would be to do good and be well. Find time to do good with your burgeoning legal skills. Start doing pro bono work in your first semester and keep at it until you graduate. You and your community will be better for it. Second, be well. Be patient with and kind to yourself and don't stop doing the things that you love. You and your community will be better for it."
Sarah Mae Jennings serves as policy director at the Texas Fair Defense Project in Austin. Previously, she directed TFDP’s statewide pro bono program, helping low-income Texans restore their driver’s licenses and alleviate barriers to jobs, housing, and public benefits imposed by criminal records. Before returning to Austin, she worked as a trial attorney at Orleans Public Defenders in New Orleans, Louisiana. She began her work there as a fellow, supported by a Texas Law Gideon’s Promise Fellowship.
At Texas Law, Sarah Mae was a Mithoff Pro Bono Scholar, co-leading the Expunction Project as a 2L and developing a new Driver’s License Reclamation Project as a 3L. She participated in the Capital Punishment Clinic, the Criminal Defense Clinic, the Civil Rights Clinic, and the Immigration Clinic, and interned with the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia and Orleans Public Defenders.
- 2016-17 Pro Bono Scholars
- 2017 Whitehurst Public Interest Summer Fellows
- Justice Center Names 2017-18 Public Service Scholars
- 2017-18 Pro Bono Scholars
- Seven members of the class of 2018 receive Graduating Student Awards
- Five Students Awarded 2018 Texas Law Post-Graduate Fellowships
- Texas Law Graduates Receive Prestigious Public Service Fellowships in 2018