Jeannie Kosciolek, a longtime field supervisor in our Externship Course, has been named as this year's winner of the B. Riney Green Access to Justice Award from the Tennessee Alliance for Legal Services (TALS). Jeannie, the managing attorney for Senior Family and Senior Law practice group at Memphis Area Legal Services (MALS), has worked closely with many Memphis Law students assigned to the Memphis Area Legal Services externship. She also continues to play an important role as a member of the advisory board for Memphis CHiLD, the Law School's innovative collaboration with MALS and Le Bonheur Children's Hospital through which our Medical-Legal Partnership Clinic operates.
Jeannie received the award based on her leadership in promoting inter-program cooperation within the access to justice community statewide. The award was created in the honor of Nashville attorney B. Riney Green, who successfully engaged a bipartisan group of stakeholders from across Tennessee to ensure continuation of critically needed funding for legal aid programs during the late 1980s. In addition to maintaining a full caseload, Kosciolek has dedicated significant time sharing best practices in medical legal partnerships and family law with her colleagues statewide. Kosciolek's exemplary work on an innovative new legal services delivery model to address second generational poverty in partnership with TALS and the Tennessee Department of Human Services led to a statewide expansion of the project to assist TANF eligible families that will launch in 2020.