Jessica “Jessi” Hart is a 3L at Texas A&M University School of Law. Jessi studied Agricultural Business with a minor in economics at Texas A&M University. In law school, she has focused much of her legal studies on agricultural, energy, and environmental law. Recently, her focus has switched more towards general property law, which she loves because it encompasses all other areas that she is interested in without being confined to one subject area. She was also surprised to find how focusing on property law has shifted her towards estate planning, inspiring her to work with the estate planning clinic last semester.
This past summer, Jessi worked with the Environment Protection Division (EPD) of the Texas Attorney General’s Office. She explained that her journey to the EPD began when she sought a natural resource or environmental internship her 1L year but did not secure one. Instead, she worked in a rural firm with a Texas Wesleyan Law alumnus whom she met at a Property Journal Symposium during the first month of her 1L year. She said that her time spent with the rural firm allowed her to gain more experience than she would have at a traditional legal research-focused internship as she learned about the process of the law and the courtroom through direct participation.
During her 2L year, Jessi applied for the position with the Attorney General’s Office through Texas A&M’s on-campus interview program. She explained that when they asked her if she had any litigation experience, she listed all her activities at the rural law firm. The interviewers were pleasantly surprised by her courtroom experience and offered her a position with EPD shortly after the interview. Jessi added that when COVID hit, the AG’s office was very communicative and reassuring about their plans to redesign the internship. They even offered interns computers, and Jessi said she was very grateful for their flexibility under the circumstances.
While working with EPD, Jessi noted that the work was very litigation heavy, which made her realize how crucial her previous experience was. To help ease the interns into the workload, the EPD provided interns with a mentor involved in the litigation process. “This mentorship was a good fit because I always had someone to explain things to me,” she said. Her mentor also gave her opportunities to speak in division-wide meetings when addressing topics on which she was well versed, which allowed her to apply her knowledge to the work beyond just learning from the attorneys.
Jessi explained that the cases she worked on allowed her to rethink her focus and her growing interest in property law as a whole. She recalls one of her most intriguing cases to her involved analyzing an adverse possession claim against the lessee of a 100-year-old oil and gas lease. Overall, Jessi said that she spent most of her time on case research, but during her last week at EPD, she drafted a petition to address unauthorized dumping in rivers and streams.
Jessi asserted that one of the most valuable aspects of this internship was the confidence she gained in the skills she learned in school. “It was nice to have some constructive feedback that reinforced a good amount of the knowledge I learned in the classroom.”