Alex Twinem’s second-year spring at Stanford Law School looked a bit different than that of her peers.

Twinem, rather than cramming for exams, was hard at work on a case that ultimately resulted in a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision: Obergefell v. Hodges. The high court’s 5-4 ruling in June 2015 legalized same-sex marriage across the country, capping a decades-long fight by LGBTQ Americans for equal representation under the law.

Twinem helped write the reply brief for a group of 12 people from Kentucky at the heart of the lawsuit as a member of Stanford’s Supreme Court Litigation Clinic. The clinic, founded in 2004 by appellate powerhouses Pamela Karlan and Jeffrey Fisher, allows students to work on real-life Supreme Court cases while still in law school.