Arkansas Law Review

Arkansas Law Review

Volume 78, Number 2 (2025)

Article

Foreward

Cynthia E. Nance

The 2024 Arkansas Law Review Symposium, Embracing the Past, Enhancing the Future: Exploring the Evolution of Legal Education, was a prominent event in the University of Arkansas School of Law’s Centennial Speaker Series. As the School of Law celebrated its 100th anniversary, it seemed an appropriate time to focus our collective attention on critical and emerging issues: recent developments in bar admission processes, shifts in accreditation standards, online legal education, approaches to Artificial Intelligence in the classroom and the profession, and the newly developed NextGen Bar exam.

Article

A Tale of Two Law Schools

Benjamin H. Barton

On the august occasion of the 100th anniversary of the University of Arkansas School of Law, this Essay celebrates one of its singular achievements: the decision of then-Dean Robert Leflar to admit Silas Herbert Hunt, the first African American allowed to enroll for graduate or professional studies at any all-white university in the former Confederacy since reconstruction. The bravery of both Leflar and Hunt has been correctly celebrated in the past, but this Essay seeks to highlight why it was actually braver than one might think (for both Hunt and Leflar) by comparing the actions of Arkansas Law with the shameful and illegal actions of the University of Tennessee College of Law (an institution that I love enough to hold responsible for its past). My colleague Briana Rosenbaum has aptly described the University of Tennessee’s approach to desegregation as “[d]eflect, [d]elay, [and] [d]eny.”

Article

Licensure as Pathway, Not Barrier

Brian Gallini

The legal profession knows it has an access to justice crisis. One side lacks a lawyer in approximately three-quarters of the twenty million civil cases filed across state courts every year. Against that concerning backdrop is how we license attorneys. The most common method is the written bar exam. But that exam bears little resemblance to the practice of law, produces racially disparate results, and is shockingly expensive for law graduates to prepare for and take.

Article

Be Curious, Not Judgmental: Neurodiversity in Legal Education

Katherine Silver Kelly

This Article takes the position that the curiosity associated with legal education is limited to those who are neurotypical. For students who are neurodivergent, law school is a place of judgment, not curiosity. The number of neurodiverse law students is increasing, yet they are not sufficiently supported in law school. This Article will seek to show how the current structures of legal education, although fundamentally sound, have become overly rigid. Instead of providing students with intellectual foundations of legal doctrine that prepare them for the challenges of practicing law, the existing status quo stifles those goals. By limiting our practices to what we currently know and what we are comfortable doing, we limit our potential for excellence. In Part I, I introduce what neurodiversity means, especially for law students, the problems they face, how law schools fall short, and why law schools should care about this. In Part II, I explain the legal mandates designed to remove barriers and the roadblocks legal education and law schools erect. In Part III, I lay out concrete solutions and strategies for engaging our curiosity rather than our judgment.

Article

Proposed Updates to ABA Standards on Distance/Remote Education

Adrien Katherine Wing

In Part II, this Article provides an overview of the history of distance education, generally and in law schools. In Part III, it assesses the pros and cons of this type of education. In Part IV, it concludes as to whether the system should be expanded, remain the same, or contract.

Comment

The Rural Rescue: Tackling Arkansas’s Legal Deserts Through Proven Statutory Reform

Kathryn Totty

In some rural counties of Arkansas, a single attorney is responsible for serving thousands of residents, depriving many Arkansans of even basic legal representation. Imagine facing eviction, fighting for custody of your child, contesting a divorce, or navigating the complexities of probate with no attorney for miles. This stark reality exemplifies the growing “legal deserts” problem facing rural Arkansas, where access to justice has become a luxury rather than a right. To combat the growing shortage of legal professionals in rural areas, states seek new solutions—some proving more successful than others. Several states have implemented rural attorney incentive programs, typically managed by their respective judicial branches or bar associations. Such programs, alongside scholarships, fellowships, and incubator projects, aim to attract and retain lawyers in underserved, rural communities. This Note examines the ongoing rural legal desert crisis in Arkansas and proposes that the state adapt its rural physician recruitment program to increase the presence of Arkansas lawyers in rural communities.

Comment

Recent Developments

Ilse M. Ghent

Glossip v. Oklahoma; City And County Of San Francisco v. EPA; Bell To Bell, No Cell Act