University of Texas School of Law second-year students Kassandra Gonzalez and Patrick Sellars have been awarded Baron & Budd Public Interest Scholarships for the 2017-18 academic year. Each will receive $2,500 and will work at least 150 hours over a semester with a nonprofit organization that provides legal services to underserved individuals or communities in the Austin area.
The scholarships were made possible by a gift from the Baron & Budd law firm, and are administered at Texas Law by the William Wayne Justice Center for Public Interest Law.
Meet the scholars:
Patrick Sellars, ’19, will work this fall with the Capital Area Private Defender Service (CAPDS) in Austin. He will work on CAPDS’s forensic project, investigating wrongful conviction claims based on unreliable DNA evidence. Last summer Sellars clerked in the trial division of the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia in Washington, D.C. Last year Sellars founded a podcast, “Service Roads,” which highlights attorneys working for social justice.
Kassandra Gonzalez, ’19, will work this spring for Texas Legal Service’s Austin Medical-Legal Partnership (AMLP), a nonprofit partnership between People’s Community Clinic and Texas Legal Services. She will focus on patient advocacy before administrative agencies, including the Social Security Administration (SSA). She will also provide community education to pregnant women. Last summer Gonzalez interned at the AMLP, where she interviewed potential clients, drafted briefs in SSA cases, and researched health care insurance issues.