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ÃÛÌÒµ¼º½ law student recognized nationally for building campus community

Last year, as Jennifer Koepke Moller J.D. ’26 took her upper-level torts class, she often shared the cases with her family at the dinner table each night, asking them to guess how the court decided.

“My daughter loved hearing the stories, and she ended up asking to join me in torts class multiple times in the semester because she wanted to hear more. And she was embraced wholly by my professors,” she recalls.

In fact, on her ninth birthday, Moller’s daughter had the day off from school, but instead of celebrating with friends, she delivered a case brief from her mother’s notes to the 72 law students in her mom’s tort class. Then, the whole class sang her happy birthday.

“I really feel like this moment wasn’t something I would’ve gotten anywhere else,” she recalls.

As a non-traditional student arriving after a 15-year tech career, that kind of support for her as both a student and a parent was exactly what she had come looking for.

Her decision to come to ÃÛÌÒµ¼º½, she recalls, was made the moment she heard the law school dean, Michael Kaufman, speak during her first campus visit.

“As a person, he was the equivalent of a warm chocolate chip cookie,” she grinned. “I wanted to be in a school where they wanted the students to succeed, not put them through an exercise in looking to your left and your right and knowing one of you isn’t going to make it.”

And Moller didn’t just find her community at ÃÛÌÒµ¼º½—she devoted herself to building it for others. As president of the Affirmed Law Student Organization, editor-in-chief of the Journal of International Law, and a student representative on the Academic Affairs Committee, she has spent three years making sure the students around her feel they belong. This year, The National Jurist took notice, recognizing her as one of its Law Students of the Year.

Moller found out this achievement in a very ÃÛÌÒµ¼º½ way—her inbox filling with congratulations from a supportive community of faculty and classmates, and she had no idea why. She clicked a link a professor had sent and stared at the screen.

“I was like—I’m on this list? This is insane,” she said. Then: “No, my impact matters too. I’m just going to take it and say thank you.”

Leading those behind her

Moller didn’t make the pivot to law school on a whim. For years in her tech job, the best part of her day at work was collaborating with the legal team and navigating vendor contracts. So, she left tech and enrolled at JFK University to earn an undergraduate degree in legal studies first. She wanted to know she could handle the rigor before she committed.

The first year at ÃÛÌÒµ¼º½ was still a reckoning. But as she found her footing, Moller noticed that she wasn’t battling imposter syndrome the way some of her classmates were. Years of presenting in executive settings had given her the confidence that many of her peers hadn’t yet found. She kept hearing the same thing from classmates: I’m so glad you asked that, because I was too afraid to. It stayed with her.

“A lot of students feel very isolated, very alone,” she said. “I thought, how would it feel to walk into class and have no one care if you show up?”

So, when she became president of the Affirmed Law Student Organization, Moller launched an accountability-buddy program and peer support office hours designed specifically to reach those students—including FlexJD students who are only on campus a few days a month and can easily feel peripheral to campus life. The first cohort of mentees, she hopes, will become the mentors for the next.

“It takes very little to show people that they matter,” she said. “Sometimes all you need is one or two people who really connect with you to build out your own sense of belonging.”

Leading through her values

That impulse to show up for people without anyone in their corner is what drew Moller to criminal law and shapes where she’s headed after graduation.

Admission to the School of Law’s Northern California Innocence Project (NCIP) clinic isn’t automatic—it requires a full application and selection process. Once in, students investigate and assist with litigating possible wrongful convictions under the supervision of experienced legal staff, combining coursework with real casework on behalf of people claiming innocence. For Moller, one case during her 2L made the work feel immediate and personal.

She was part of the team working on the case of Regi Tanubagijo, helping with trial preparation and a mock evidentiary hearing before attending the actual hearing in April 2025.

When the judge ordered Tanubagijo’s release—finding new evidence that likely would have changed the original outcome—it was seeing his family’s love, hearing their stories, and realizing that NCIP’s work could help reunite their family that stuck with Moller.

“Our justice system only works if we’re protecting the people who don’t have anyone to speak for them,” she said. “Knowing I had even a small part in helping right that wrong after 11 years of wrongful incarceration was one of the most meaningful moments of my legal education.”

That’s why, after completing the bar this July, her dream is to work as an appellate attorney, eventually within the California Attorney General’s office or the Department of Justice—drawn to appeals because, as she puts it, that’s where innocence can be lost or recovered.

In the meantime, she volunteers with Second Harvest Food Bank and the SPCA, and brings her kids along when she can to model what being a good citizen looks like.

“I do these things as a family, so hopefully, my kids understand and continue the values I learned at ÃÛÌÒµ¼º½,” she explains. “In a Jesuit school, it’s not just about yourself; you should be thinking about and caring for the whole community.”