Six Law Graduates Who Didn't Wait to Serve

How do you get a job in public service? For this year's Fenton honorees, the answer was simple—they'd already been doing the work
"John 'Jack' Brandt, Bailey Cortright, Madison Taylor Donovan, Jacqueline McLaughlin, Alexander Moore, and Samantha O'Neil, Suffolk University Law School's John E. Fenton, Jr. Public Service Award winners
John "Jack" Brandt, Bailey Cortright, Madison Taylor Donovan, Jacqueline McLaughlin, Alexander Moore, and Samantha O'Neil, Suffolk Law's John E. Fenton, Jr. Public Service Award winners.

Whether it was arguing a diversion motion that kept a teenager out of detention, drafting a jury ordinance with a tribal nation, or building a benefits tool used by thousands of veterans, this year's John E. Fenton, Jr. Public Service Award honorees felt called to go beyond what was required of them. Doing so felt natural and necessary, and none of them are stopping now. Each of the May 2026 graduates is continuing their focus on public service in a paid, full-time role.

The Fenton Award comes with the largest cash prize of any public-service honor at Suffolk Law. This year's six recipients—Jacqueline McLaughlin, Madison Taylor Donovan, Alexander Moore, Bailey Cortright, Samantha O'Neil, and John "Jack" Brandt—include two prosecutors, two public defenders, one housing attorney, and one military intelligence attorney.

The prosecutors

Jacqueline McLaughlin
Assistant State's Attorney, Rock Island County, Illinois

Jacqueline McLaughlin describes her ambition as humanizing the prosecutorial system — treating both victims and defendants with dignity while still holding people accountable. As a student prosecutor at the Middlesex County District Attorney's Office, she managed her own cases, representing the Commonwealth in all stages of criminal litigation, from arraignment through trial and post-conviction motions. Alongside that casework, she served as a research assistant for Professor Christina Miller, studying how diversion statutes vary from state to state with an eye toward making rules more accessible and useful for the attorneys and defendants who rely on them.

Madison Taylor Donovan
Assistant District Attorney, Plymouth County (Massachusetts) District Attorney's Office

Madison Taylor Donovan's path ran through three district attorney's offices—Plymouth and Middlesex in Massachusetts, and Bucks County in Pennsylvania—plus a judicial internship in Plymouth's Juvenile Department. At Bucks County she conducted preliminary hearings and helped assess cases for charging; at Middlesex she argued bail and handled arraignments as a certified student attorney. Among the experiences driving her, she says, is a family member's murder, still unsolved after more than forty years.

The public defenders

Alexander Moore
Deputy Public Defender, Contra Costa County (California) Public Defender's Office

As a student attorney in Suffolk's Juvenile Defenders Clinic, Alexander Moore represented juvenile clients, managing a caseload that ranged from misdemeanors to felonies—work that helped him earn Suffolk's Outstanding Trial Advocate Award. As a law clerk at the Contra Costa County Public Defender's Office (CCCPDO), Moore second-chaired a felony trial before he'd finished law school, assisting with jury selection and trial strategy from motions in limine through verdict. He initially joined CCCPDO as a law clerk.

Bailey Cortright
CPCS Youth Advocacy Division, Springfield, Massachusetts

Bailey Cortright spent her final year of school managing a full caseload of delinquency cases in Suffolk's Juvenile Defenders Clinic, drafting and arguing a motion for judicial diversion that kept one client in the community and out of jail. Earlier, as a certified student attorney with CPCS's Youth Advocacy Division, she drafted motions to dismiss and briefs on equal protection and sentencing fairness for juvenile clients—work she funded in part through the Thomas J. Drinan Fellowship, which she has said provided real financial relief while she put herself through law school.

Housing and human rights

Samantha O'Neil
Fair Housing Staff Attorney, Community Legal Aid, Worcester, Massachusetts

In Worcester Housing Court's Lawyer for the Day program, Samantha O'Neil helped pro se tenants understand their rights to prepare them to argue their cases in court. She also helped the Center for Housing and Justice Policy prepare community eviction-sealing clinics—sessions that teach tenants and organizers to use a new Massachusetts law letting people petition to seal eviction filings from court databases and tenant-screening reports. The law addresses a specific problem: an eviction filing can follow a tenant indefinitely regardless of the outcome, even if they won the case, paid what was owed, or the landlord dropped it entirely.

Through Suffolk's Human Rights and Indigenous Peoples Clinic, O'Neil helped draft a tribal jury ordinance in collaboration with a New England tribal nation.
The intelligence attorney

John "Jack" Brandt
Legal Counsel, U.S. Coast Guard Intelligence Coordination Center

John "Jack" Brandt is an active-duty Coast Guard lieutenant. While pursuing an online master's degree during counter-narcotics missions in the Caribbean, he paid a full semester's tuition out of pocket before learning he'd been eligible for military tuition assistance all along. As an education services officer on his next assignment, he worked to make sure none of his crewmates missed the same benefit. At Suffolk, he set out to help an even larger number of service members.

Through the school's Legal Innovation & Technology Clinic, he learned Python and built online tools including the Military Benefits Assistant and the Coast Guard Mutual Assistance Program Finder, that have since helped more than 2,100 veterans and military families navigate their benefits.

The Program Finder alone connected 1,366 Coast Guard families to emergency aid during a recent Department of Homeland Security shutdown. The effort drew the attention of National Jurist, which named him one of eight "2026 Law Students of the Year."