Jessica Hallett
Staff Attorney - Native Communities (CA)
Oakland, California
Email Jessica
Jess has wanted to do work that pushes back against the carceral system since she took the clinic “Challenging the Consequences of Mass Incarceration” in law school. In that clinic, Jess was part of a team that wrote a successful habeas corpus petition for a client who had represented himself for over twenty years while wrongly incarcerated for a murder conviction. Jess was also an editor on A Jailhouse Lawyer’s Manual, a handbook of legal information designed for people who are incarcerated. During law school summers, Jess interned at the Southern Center for Human Rights in Atlanta and the California Appellate Project in San Francisco, both of which involved representing people who had been sentenced to the death penalty.
After law school, Jess worked at the San Francisco Public Defender as a fellow, both in the research and writing unit and as a member of a felony trial team. Most recently before joining Root & Rebound, Jess worked for five years as a Staff Attorney and Supervising Attorney at PRC, a San Francisco non-profit. At PRC, she represented clients in their SSI and Social Security disability cases, including at hearings before Administrative Law Judges.
Jess received her BA magna cum laude from Middlebury College (2006), and her JD from Columbia Law School (2012), where she was a recipient of the James Marks Murphy Prize for Clinical Advocacy and was a James Kent Scholar and a Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar.
Jess lives in Oakland with her family. She likes to hike and walk outside, loves cooking and trying out Oakland’s great restaurants, looks forward to traveling more after the pandemic, and enjoys getting back to her English major roots by curling up with a good book and a great cup of coffee.
Jessica Hallett
Staff Attorney - Native Communities (CA)
Oakland, California
Email Jessica
Jess has wanted to do work that pushes back against the carceral system since she took the clinic “Challenging the Consequences of Mass Incarceration” in law school. In that clinic, Jess was part of a team that wrote a successful habeas corpus petition for a client who had represented himself for over twenty years while wrongly incarcerated for a murder conviction. Jess was also an editor on A Jailhouse Lawyer’s Manual, a handbook of legal information designed for people who are incarcerated. During law school summers, Jess interned at the Southern Center for Human Rights in Atlanta and the California Appellate Project in San Francisco, both of which involved representing people who had been sentenced to the death penalty.
After law school, Jess worked at the San Francisco Public Defender as a fellow, both in the research and writing unit and as a member of a felony trial team. Most recently before joining Root & Rebound, Jess worked for five years as a Staff Attorney and Supervising Attorney at PRC, a San Francisco non-profit. At PRC, she represented clients in their SSI and Social Security disability cases, including at hearings before Administrative Law Judges.
Jess received her BA magna cum laude from Middlebury College (2006), and her JD from Columbia Law School (2012), where she was a recipient of the James Marks Murphy Prize for Clinical Advocacy and was a James Kent Scholar and a Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar.
Jess lives in Oakland with her family. She likes to hike and walk outside, loves cooking and trying out Oakland’s great restaurants, looks forward to traveling more after the pandemic, and enjoys getting back to her English major roots by curling up with a good book and a great cup of coffee.
Why do you come to work at Root & Rebound every day?
I think that the work we do is grounded in love. I come to this work because of a deep and unwavering belief in the humanity of all people, and a desire to find community and solidarity with people who have been impacted by mass incarceration. It’s my goal to help return power to those from whom it has been stolen, and my work at Root & Rebound helps me do that.
Sign Up
Join our mailing list.
