Putting their money where the need is

A fellowship funded by faculty members at the University of Texas School of Law will be paying 2008 law school graduate Aaron Johnson’s $37,000 salary to work at the Equal Justice Center in Austin. Faculty members created the Law Faculty Post-Graduate Fellowship in Public Interest in 2004 and have since funded five $37,000 fellowships, including Johnson’s, according to an announcement on the law school’s Web site. The fellowship makes it possible for a public interest group to have the help of an additional lawyer without bearing the salary expense for that additional lawyer, according to comments by professor Eden E. Harrington in the announcement. Harrington is fellowship program administrator and director of the law school’s William Wayne Justice Center for Public Interest Law. While a student, Johnson worked at the law school’s Transnational Worker  Rights Clinic on cases involving unpaid day laborers and employees due overtime pay. At the Equal Justice Center, Johnson will be helping low-income workers obtain their earned wages.
- Jeanne Graham