By Miriella Jiffar
This February, Jillian Jackson (ΦBK, Spelman College) was one of two law students awarded Tulane University’s Dr. King Student Leadership Award for her commitment to leadership and service in her legal training, embodying Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s vision for equality.
“I was very surprised and honored,” Jackson said. “Dr. King is somebody that we would only hope we’re continuing his dream and his legacy.”
The award meant even more to the third-year law student since she is from Memphis, Tennessee, where Dr. King was assassinated in 1968.
“It encouraged me to continue being involved in certain causes… [when I] transition into full-time practicing, keeping up with pro bono work, and keeping up with my community, volunteering, ‘fighting the good fight’ in the words of John Lewis. I think as much of a shock it was to me, I think it was also confirmation that the job isn’t done,” she said.
Jackson knew she wanted to be involved in the legal field since high school and took her interests in politics to Spelman College, where she majored in Political Science. She credits her time at Spelman for teaching her to always be aware of what’s going on in the world and in her community, which she’s taken to heart in her legal career.
“I know that it [law] affects everything that we do,” she said. “Politics, structure, systems, and the law that’s on paper… that controls the way we exist in the world and exist in this nation.”
Jackson was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa during her senior year at Spelman in the spring of 2022, and she fondly remembers how excited she and her friends were when they were all invited to join the honor society.
“To us, Phi Beta Kappa, especially at an institution like Spelman, it was symbolic of how seriously we took our scholarship [and] how amazing our professors were…. So the fact that they deemed us students that had achieved certain heights that they wanted to honor with Phi Beta Kappa, I think it’s something that I’ll always be proud of.”
Throughout her three years at Tulane, Jackson has held a variety of student leadership positions, excelled academically, and mentored students in the greater New Orleans community.
“I think law school is a sprint; truly it requires a lot out of you in a short amount of time,” she said.
Currently, she is the 3L Class President for Tulane Law’s Student Bar Association, following her election as Executive Vice President and 1L Secretary the past two years. Jackson is also part of Tulane University’s chapter of the Black Law Students Association. This year, she served as the head coach for BLSA’s appellate Moot Court Team, where they compete at a regional and national level.
“I’ve always thought, you can’t complain or be upset about things if you’re not in the room or you haven’t tried to be in the room,” Jackson said.
Outside of the classroom, Jackson had the opportunity to practice law as a student attorney in Tulane’s Civil Rights and Federal Practice Clinic. She’s loved the hands-on experience, from drafting legal documents, speaking with clients, and meeting judges from both the federal and state levels.
As clinicians, Jackson and her peers tackle all aspects of litigation, representing clients from the greater New Orleans area in federal court on cases that involve employment discrimination, fair housing, police and official misconduct, and other constitutional claims.
“We’ve all had the chance to either work on something that is at the complaint stage or just being filed, [to] anywhere up until the final stages [of] going to trial and even past that, like post-decision monitoring,” she said.
Jackson’s interest in civil rights led her to an internship with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund in their Washington D.C. office last summer, where she worked on complex and impact litigation.
“I felt so honored to walk in the halls lined with photos of Thurgood Marshall and Constance Baker Motley and so many other civil rights giants,” she said. “The work we did was very, very much aligned with who I am as a person. I think it was one of the most beneficial experiences I could have had in law school.”
Now that Jackson is coming to the end of her time at Tulane Law, she hopes to focus her legal practice on the civil side of litigation. She’s also interested in labor and employment law, regulatory work, and government compliance.
After graduating and taking the North Carolina bar exam, Jackson is determined to continue bringing her passion for law to the communities she serves.
“No matter what I practice, whether it’s in a big corporate place or in a nonprofit, helping and being engaged civically within the community and what’s affecting people was something that I was always going to do,” she said.
Miriella Jiffar is a graduate student at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, concentrating in Magazine Journalism. She is a 2025 graduate of The University of Virginia, where she studied English, Cognitive Science, and French. She was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa there in April 2025. The University of Virginia is home to the Beta of Virginia chapter of Phi Beta Kappa.