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Age: 43

Law School and Graduation Year: 2004

Occupation:  Senior Assistant Attorney General, Consumer Protection

Previous Elected Office:  None

Community Service:  I am a career public servant and assist consumers every day in resolving disputes with businesses.  I have served in staff roles supporting all branches of government—legislative, executive and judicial—at the state and federal level.

I have also served on numerous boards and commissions.  I have been a member of the Pulaski County Bar and Arkansas Bar Associations.  I have been appointed by the Arkansas Bar Association President to various Arkansas Bar Committees, including: the Committee for a Modern Judiciary, the Legal Services Committee, and the Unauthorized Practice of Law Committee.

I have served as President of the Hendrix College Alumni Association, which includes 14,000 Hendrix College alumni worldwide.  I am currently serving my second year as President of the University of Arkansas Law Alumni Society Board, which develops and maintains relationship among the University of Arkansas’s law school alumni.

In my spiritual life, I am in my fourth year as President of the St. Thomas More Society of Arkansas, which sponsors the annual Red Mass—a religious service celebrating the role of lawyers, judges, and public servants in our society.

1. What experience, knowledge, and attributes of yours make you believe you will be a good judge?

I have the natural temperament and experience to serve as a judge.  Having served as a judicial law clerk to a United States District Judge, I learned how to manage a court docket efficiently and effectively.  I then gained experience in private practice at a prominent Little Rock firm, but I then returned to public service at the Arkansas Attorney General’s Office.  In this role, I have obtained substantial trial and litigation experience.

Importantly, my friends say that I have an instinctive quality that focuses on listening to all sides of an argument before suggesting an answer to an argument or dispute. This quality forms the temperament that we should want in a judge—one who listens first, weighs all options, and then renders a decision without prejudging a case or situation.

2. What are the three most important areas where the administration of justice can be improved at the circuit court level, and how would you implement improvement?

Efficiency.  I would institute a chambers rule that all motions that might fully resolve a case (i.e., a so-called “dispositive motion”) should be resolved within six months of being fully briefed.  Additionally, I would prepare a “pending motions list” that would keep track of all pending motions, thus creating a “to-do” list of sorts.

Management of Court Calendars and Case Status.  One of the most frustrating and difficult aspects of litigation practice is the lack of awareness of the court’s trial calendar and availability for hearings and trials.  I would like to examine ways to make the calendar more available to counsel, potentially by Internet-based means.

Issuance of Scheduling Orders.  Cases often slow due to the lack of diligent prosecution by the parties.  I would plan to issue scheduling orders as early as possible so that the parties prepare their cases in anticipation of an approaching trial date.

3. What changes if any can the court system make to reduce the numbers of juvenile and criminal offenders?

The courts should encourage alternatives to sentencing of juvenile and first-time offenders.  Additionally, the courts should foster a culture of treatment for addiction and mental illness rather than incarceration.  Finally, the courts need to be involved in our communities in order to encourage education and awareness of the problems we face and the need for all of us to play a part in helping our communities to be better and stronger.   

4. Do you believe in leveling the playing field between pro se parties (parties without lawyers) and parties represented by counsel, and if so, how would your court do this?

It is essential that all parties, whether represented or not, be on equal footing in the eyes of the court.  That said, pro se parties’ lack of knowledge and training is challenging because the absence of representation potentially jeopardizes the legal rights of the pro se party.

Often, the reasons for pro se representation include the inability to pay or lack of trust of lawyers.  To help with this problem, my court would encourage limited purpose representation by counsel as well as the involvement of the local legal clinics provided by the State’s two law schools.  This type of representation—whether by law students or members of the bar—would help protect the rights of litigants, put pro se parties on more equal footing with represented parties, and would provide the court with more flexibility to resolve the matter efficiently and fairly.

5. Do you believe that alternate dispute resolution (mediation and arbitration) should play a greater role in disputes that come to the circuit courts, and if so, how should that happen?

While alternative dispute resolution can be a helpful tool for courts and can reduce the load on our state court system, it should not be used as a reason to deny litigants’ access to their day in court and to be heard.  Too often, arbitration, for example, is criticized for operating as a barrier to parties’ access to the courts. By contrast, in some situations, mediations can be quite useful and beneficial. Mediations can narrow issues, focus the parties on areas of agreement and disagreement, and they can provide a useful, more comfortable, and predictable forum for settlement.

Importantly, mediations, in particular, are costly.  In the federal system, mediation costs are typically covered by the court system.  If mediation were to occupy a greater role in the circuit court system, then the option of in-court mediation at the court’s expense ought to be an option.

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