The Arkansas Attorney General’s office is expanding its services to northwest Arkansas in an effort to work more closely with the state’s flagship university. Ozarks at Large’s Daniel Caruth reports.
Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin opened a new office in Fayetteville yesterday. Griffin says the satellite office will offer University of Arkansas law school students better opportunities to work with the state office.
The 800-square-foot space will be located in a University of Arkansas-owned building on the downtown Fayetteville Square, which also houses the School of Architecture, Community Design Center and the Pryor Center for Arkansas Oral and Visual History.
During a press conference yesterday, Griffin explained U of A students could previously clerk for the AG’s office in the summer, while Little Rock’s Bowen School of Law students are able to clerk year-round. He says the presence here helps to fill the gap and take advantage of top student talent across the state.
“We are here as an opportunity for students, and it benefits us because we get to tap into the resource of the best students at the law school.”
He says the office also helps to expand legal services to the region and its growing business sector.
“And when I’m up here, I can use it. Our investigators work with law enforcement up here. They can use it. We have a little meeting area for staff. And so we have a very close relationship with the trucking industry, particularly on human trafficking. We have very close relationships with the retail industry fighting organized retail crime. I was at Walmart last week looking at some of their new operations center, looking for more ways that we can work together, using some of their capabilities to do what my job requires me to do, particularly on the law enforcement side.”
Griffin says many state attorneys general operate multiple office locations. From 2017 to 2022, the state ran an AG office out of the city of Lowell. Griffin closed that location when he took office in 2023, he says, to consolidate his staff and realign his department’s mission.
The AG’s office will rent this campus space for $1,500 a month, and it will be staffed by two full-time attorneys and two student clerks. University of Arkansas Chancellor Charles Robinson says the partnership helps to fulfill the school’s land-grant mission.
“The continued relationship is important to us. The friendship that the attorney general and I have is important to me, and the University of Arkansas is benefiting from this relationship and our students. They are there having the opportunities to engage in ways that they have not had in the past. And so we’re thrilled about this, and we look forward to seeing this flower grow and being supported by the university in every way.”
This partnership comes after the university’s law school made national headlines for rescinding a job offer to its incoming dean after several state Republicans complained about her legal position on transgender athletes. Griffin was among the officials who raised concerns about Emily Suski and says he stands behind the school’s decision, despite student and faculty backlash.
“I got a text right after that, and I didn’t say rescind her contract. I just thought you could do better. And I made my views known. But I got a text after this that said, ‘Thank you, Attorney General, for speaking out. There are a number of us here in the law school that feel like our views are ignored and not represented, and we appreciate you doing this, bringing some balance to what is otherwise not a particularly balanced profession.’
“So the assumption of your question is because her contract was rescinded, we might have a more difficult time finding great students. Nonsense. How about because her contract was rescinded, you’re going to get a lot of great students who otherwise maybe wouldn’t have considered Arkansas.”
Robinson says the school will likely name a new interim dean next month. The current dean, Cynthia Nance, is scheduled to step down on June 30, with a new interim dean taking over July 1, according to an email the school’s provost sent to law school staff last week.
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