Grace Hayes first considered becoming a lawyer in high school, when they competed in speech and debate. During college, they spent a summer interning at the Georgia Resource Center (which handles capital cases post-conviction) and another at the Western Georgia Judicial Circuit Public Defender. These experiences solidified their desire in public interest law, and they began applying to law schools.

Early on in Grace’s search, Vanderbilt immediately stood out for its support of public interest law. “Learning about the Public Interest Office at Vanderbilt, the opportunities that they have for stipends, the faculty that are really passionate about public interest work, or who have had experiences — [that] made me feel like, not only would I have opportunities to take classes and pursue opportunities that I was really interested in, but also that I would be well supported along the way,” they explained.

During their three years at Vanderbilt Law School, Grace took advantage of the numerous classes offered on public interest topics, including Criminal Procedure: Investigation with Professor Farhang Heydari, Capital Punishment with Professor Lauren Sudeall, Mental Health Law with Professor Christopher Slobogin, and Criminal Procedure: Adjudication, and Criminal Law with Professor Nancy J. King. They also worked as a research assistant for Professor Heydari, focusing on topics such as state police operations and organized retail theft. “I’ve loved getting to learn more about something that is actually going to impact my clients in the future,” Grace said.

Outside the classroom, Grace has also been very involved on campus and taken on multiple leadership roles. They have served as the Editor-in-Chief of the Vanderbilt Social Justice Reporter, the Executive Authorities Editor of the Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law, the treasurer of the Criminal Law Association, and as a senior member of the National Moot Court Team.

They also spent their 2L year serving as the president of outLAW, a Vanderbilt student organization that seeks to foster and encourage academic success and professional competence of LGBTQQIAA law students. “That was a really rewarding experience to get to know other queer students at the law school, but also to get an idea of the support resources that the law school has, and different firms in the area that are very interested in having more queer students in their spaces,” they explained.

Beyond their other commitments, Grace has completed a semester-long externship in addition to two summer internships. They spent their first summer interning with the Honorable William M. Ray II, a United States District Court Judge in the Northern District of Georgia, then completed an externship with the Nashville Public Defenders during the spring semester of their 2L year. They also stayed in Nashville for their second summer while interning at the Tennessee Office of the Post-Conviction Defender.

“Through those three experiences, I had a lot of quality opportunities to see what the legal system looks like from different perspectives and how different [public] interest areas work,” they said. “It helped me feel very informed going into the clerkship application process and considering what I wanted to do long term when I was deciding where to take the bar.”

After graduating from law school and taking the Tennessee bar exam, Grace will clerk for Judge John D. Love in the Eastern District of Texas. They hope to clerk for additional year in either a different district or a circuit court of appeals before returning to Nashville to work for one of the public defense-focused offices they interned at previously.

Grace encourages prospective students to keep the challenges of law school in perspective. “It has been so helpful for me to think about how I can be a better and more knowledgeable advocate than I was when I started law school, instead of trying to be the top of my class or find more opportunities or be on more executive boards than other people,” they said.

“I am better prepared to do the work that I want to do long term, and that is an achievement that I am going to take with me when I leave Vanderbilt Law.”