Dallas-based associate Jenae Ward has been selected to receive the Dallas Association of Young Lawyers’ (DAYL) prestigious “Young Lawyer Pro Bono Service Award” for 2024.

Since 2011, The DAYL “Young Lawyer Pro Bono Service Award” has recognized the public service or legal aid performed by a young lawyer who has provided outstanding contributions and access to justice to those in need of legal services. Honorees are selected annually by the DAYL Equal Access to Justice Committee. The award will be presented to Jenae on August 1 during a DAYL fundraiser reception in Dallas.

Over the past two years, Jenae has provided nearly 750 hours of pro bono service across a variety of matters. In 2023 alone, she logged more than 500 hours of service on behalf of indigent clients.

“I have witnessed Jenae’s outstanding commitment to the Firm and our clients, and her equally remarkable dedication to the community while advocating for those in need of pro bono legal assistance,” said Jonathan Macke, a Dallas-based Tax partner at Weil who also serves on the Firm’s Pro Bono Committee. “Jenae is committed to clients in extremely dire and desperate circumstances, and her relentless advocacy consistently earns her top marks from every pro bono client, in addition to heartfelt gratitude.”

More than 200 of Jenae’s pro bono hours last year came as Weil’s full-time, embedded Lend-A-Lawyer at the Dallas Volunteer Attorney Program (DVAP), which is a joint initiative of Legal Aid of NorthWest Texas and the Dallas Bar Association.

In 2023, Jenae was named Weil’s 13th Lend-A-Lawyer after a competitive internal selection process. Weil created the pioneering Lend-A-Lawyer program in 2005 to support DVAP’s important work on behalf of Dallas-area indigent clients who otherwise might not be able to afford legal representation. Each Lend-A-Lawyer is typically a second-, third- or fourth-year attorney at the Firm who is sent to DVAP’s office to provide on-site, full-time pro bono legal service for a two-month period. As Weil’s 2023 Lend-A-Lawyer, Jenae specifically supported DVAP’s South Dallas, West Dallas and Veterans Affairs legal clinics and worked on a range of cases from family law, name change and estate planning matters to Deceptive Trade Practices Act cases.

Jenae continued representing various DVAP clients in name change and expungement cases after her secondment ended, accruing another 150 hours of pro bono work. Jenae previously received DVAP’s 2023 “Outstanding In-House Attorney Award” in recognition of her extraordinary contributions to the organization.

In addition to work with DVAP, Jenae was a vital part of the Weil pro bono team that partnered with the Innocence Project of Texas in 2020 to represent Tyrone Day, an innocent man who wrongfully served 26 years in prison. Mr. Day was originally convicted of sexual assault in 1990 and sentenced to 40 years in prison. Although he maintained his innocence, he pleaded guilty out of fear that if the case were taken to trial, he would be sentenced to life in prison. Weil, working with the Innocence Project of Texas and the Dallas District Attorney’s Office Conviction Integrity Division, successfully secured exoneration and an actual innocence finding for Mr. Day in May 2023.

Today, Jenae serves on the board of the Innocence Project of Texas, which is one of the leading innocence organizations in the country, having exonerated or freed 35 wrongfully convicted people to date.