Stephanie Medellin

Biography

Stephanie Medellin (J.D. ’18) is the staff attorney for the Family Law Clinic at the Center for Legal and Social Justice at St. Mary’s University School of Law. Medellin represents clients in divorce, adoption, name change and probate cases in court. She also co-teaches clinic seminar classes and assists with the supervision of clinic student attorneys.

Before being a staff attorney, Medellin served as the Law School’s Director of Pro Bono Programs, where she oversaw the implementation of the service graduation requirement for J.D. students at St. Mary’s Law and served as the supervising attorney for the Identification Recovery Program, a law student-powered outreach effort at Haven for Hope, San Antonio’s largest homeless services provider.

Prior to joining St. Mary’s, she was a legal aid attorney and the director of the Legal Aid for Survivors of Sexual Assault (LASSA) Project with Texas RioGrande Legal Aid (TRLA) in Corpus Christi, Texas, where she primarily represented survivors of domestic and sexual violence in divorce, custody and protective order cases but also represented clients in education cases from elementary school to college and transgender and nonbinary clients in name and gender marker corrections. She was also the shelter attorney for The Purple Door, the Coastal Bend’s domestic violence shelter, taking direct referrals regarding clients in shelter or receiving shelter services who need legal assistance, and she represented the shelter and staff to quash subpoenas or find alternatives to protect survivor privacy.

Medellin received her law degree from St. Mary’s School of Law, where she was a student coordinator for the Pro Bono Program and a student attorney with the Civil Justice Clinic.  She is a first-generation college graduate who received undergraduate degrees in mathematics and biomedical science and a master’s degree in counseling from Texas A&M University Corpus Christi.

• Pro Bono Honor Roll Staff Honoree, Association of American Law Schools, 2024
• 2020 Top Attorneys: Rising Star, The Bend Magazine, 2020
• St. Mary’s Presidential Award, St. Mary’s University, 2018
• Alice Wright Franzke Feminist Award, St. Mary’s University, 2017

Articles in a Periodical

• “Pro Bono Proves Powerful in Career Hunt,” TYLA eNews, Feb. 2017 (with Ayssa Palacios and Brooke Holland)

Presentations

• “Your Honor. I Need a Nap: How to Lawyer Without Losing It,” Poverty Law Conference, August 2025, Austin, TX
• “Designing and Launching Pro Bono Response to Evolving Community Needs,” ABA Equal Justice Conference, May 2025, San Francisco, CA
• “Vicious Cycles & Vital Records: ID Recovery for Clients Experiencing Homelessness,” Poverty Law Conference, August 2024, Austin, TX
• “You Got to Read Between the Lines: Name and Gender Marker Corrections in Texas and How Legal Clinics Can Help,” Poverty Law Conference, August 2023, Austin, TX
• “Rolling into Court with the Squad: A Trauma-Informed and Holistic Approach for Survivor Resiliency,” Poverty Law Conference, August 2022, Austin, TX
• “What Every Poverty Lawyer Should Know About Sexual Violence,” Poverty Law Conference, September 2021, Austin, TX
• “The Interplay of Guardianship Reform and Working with Survivors of Sexual Violence,” Texas Association Against Sexual Assault Conference, July 2020, Austin, TX