Annie Smith 3L has been named recipient of the State Bar of Wisconsin’s Outstanding Public Interest Law Student award, conferred by the bar’s Public Interest Law Section.

 The award recognizes a student who demonstrates a commitment to public interest law through work history, active volunteering in the community beyond work activities, and selflessness in a commitment to serving others.

Two Wisconsin graduating law students receive the award each year: one from the UW Law School and one from Marquette Law School. This year the Public Interest Law Section asked the UW Law School’s Public Interest Law Foundation (PILF) to choose the UW recipient. 

Smith has demonstrated a commitment to public service through several different avenues.  She has participated in the Neighborhood Law Project clinical program at the Law School, where she represented clients in housing, public benefits and wage and hour disputes, and she has volunteered as an advocate in the Unemployment Appeals Clinic and as a coordinator of the UW Law School Chapter of the National Lawyers Guild (NLG). 

Smith has worked in several public interest positions, including the Southern Poverty Law Center's Immigrant Justice Project in Montgomery, Alabama, and the Migrant Farmworker Justice Project in Lake Worth, Florida.

Smith will receive the award at the Public Interest Law Section’s Recognition Celebration at Madison’s Monona Terrace as part of the State Bar convention on May 3, 2006.  At the same ceremony, UW Law School clinical professor Marsha Mansfield will be recognized with the Gordon Sinykin Award (see www.law.wisc.edu/news/main.php?ID=906 ).

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Submitted by on April 12, 2006

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