Attorney Caroline Kelley is committed to advancing the legal profession and giving back to the community. As a young legal leader, Caroline just completed her year as chair of the Arkansas Bar Association’s Young Lawyers Section. As chair, she developed a community of young lawyers who became actively involved in pro bono legal services throughout the state. She strived to diversify the board in areas of locations across the state, practices and ethnicity to help build relationships and connections among young lawyers. As YLS Chair, she served on the Arkansas Bar Association Board of Trustees Executive Committee where she is instrumental in making decisions that affect the legal profession in Arkansas.
Caroline’s outstanding service to the Young Lawyers Section was recognized at the 126th Annual Arkansas Bar Association Annual Meeting where she was awarded a 2024 Golden Gavel Award for her work as Young Lawyers Section Chair and received the Frank Elcan, II Young Lawyers Leadership Award for her commitment and dedication to the Young Lawyers Section. In 2023, she was awarded the Arkansas Bar Association Judith Ryan Gray Young Lawyer Service Award for her work with the Young Lawyers Section. She also received the Arkansas Bar Association Young Lawyers Section Award of Excellence in 2020, 2022, and 2023.
Caroline is actively involved in the Wills for Heroes pro bono program. Wills for Heroes provides simple estate planning documents and basic end-of-life legal documents free of charge to first responders in Arkansas. Police officers, firefighters, emergency health care workers and their spouses and partners are invited to participate. In her first years of involvement, she served as a volunteer where she met with first responders about their needs and prepared legal documents. Since 2023, she has led the program with the assistance of one executive board member of the Young Law Section. During her involvement, the program has grown serving hundreds of first responders.
She regularly volunteers in pro bono clinics because she recognizes how poverty and lack of access to legal assistance effect the lives of Arkansans. Often, Arkansas citizens cannot get into housing because of criminal records or cannot get hired to afford housing. She volunteers for gender marker clinics to assist transgender individuals. She volunteers for Arkansas Access to Justice Free Legal Answers Clinics to help Arkansans in need of legal assistance and works answering simple legal questions to taking on pro bono cases.
Caroline has a mentoring presence at the University of Arkansas School of Law. She is committed to incorporating law students into the practice of law through access to attorneys. She regularly speaks on panels, coaches law students on professionalism, discusses the importance of pro bono work, judges trial and negotiation competitions, assists professors with critiquing oral arguments, and serves on law school committees including the attorney committee who met with candidates for Dean of the law school.
Caroline is a member of the Greer Lingle Scholarship Committee which awards college scholarships to Rogers High School students. She is a member of the Board of Directors of the Rogers Activity Center. She is a 2024 graduate of the Arkansas Bar Association and the University of Arkansas Clinton School of Public Service Public Service Academy and is a 2020 graduate of Benton County Leadership.
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