Last week, the Law School hosted a reception in Washington, DC, to celebrate Caroline Stephens Milner (‘18) as the 2026 Alabama Rising Young Attorney. The Alabama Rising Young Attorney Award recognizes a recent graduate (within the past 10 years) who has made outstanding contributions to the legal profession, their community, and the School of Law. Read below to learn more about Caroline’s achievements since graduating from Alabama Law.
The Law School will be hosting receptions in Birmingham and Mobile this summer to celebrate the other 2026 Alumni Award recipients — Paula W. Hinton (‘79) will receive the Sam W. Pipes Distinguished Alumna Award, and Penny A. Davis (‘78), Curtis O. Liles III (‘73), Robert L. McCurley Jr. (‘66), and Irving Silver (‘65) will be inducted into the Alabama Lawyer Hall of Honor. Be on the lookout for announcements and invitations for those events!
Caroline Stephens Milner (Class of 2018)
Caroline Stephens Milner (‘18) is a partner in the Washington, DC, office of Kirkland & Ellis LLP. Originally from Huntsville, Alabama, she graduated from Auburn University summa cum laude in 2015 and was valedictorian of her class at The University of Alabama School of Law in 2018.
Upon graduation, Caroline clerked for Chief Judge William H. Pryor Jr. of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit and for Judge Neomi Rao of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit. She then moved into private practice as a litigation associate at Bass, Berry & Sims in Nashville, Tennessee, and at Kirkland & Ellis in Washington, DC.
Caroline clerked for Justice Clarence Thomas of the Supreme Court of the United States during the October 2023 Term. She was the first Alabama Law alum to clerk at the Court in more than 40 years. After her clerkship, Caroline returned to Kirkland & Ellis as a partner, where she handles a mix of trial and appellate matters in courts across the country.
Caroline and her husband, Clark, are proud parents of their nine-month-old son, Porter. Caroline’s roots with Alabama Law run deep; her father Harold Stephens (‘80), sister Jordan Hennig (‘15), and cousins Bill (‘00) and Ingrid (‘99) Lunsford are graduates of the Law School.