Cynthia Nance
Cynthia E. Nance is Dean and the Nathan G. Gordon Professor of Law at the University of Arkansas School of Law. She earned her B.S., magna cum laude, from Chicago State University, her J.D., with distinction, from the University of Iowa College of Law, and an M.A. from the University of Iowa College of Business.
She joined the faculty in 1994 and served as dean from 2006 to 2011 and again from 2022 to 2026. She was the law school’s first Director of Pro Bono and Community Engagement. Her teaching and scholarship focus on labor and employment law, workplace legislation, poverty law, and lawyers as leaders. Nance is a past chair of the Association of American Law Schools Sections on Labor and Employment Law and Employment Discrimination and an AALS Fellow.
Nance’s scholarship has appeared in journals including the Iowa Law Review, the Berkeley Journal of Employment and Labor Law, the Rutgers Law Review, and the Brandeis Law Journal. She has presented on legal and educational issues across the United States and internationally, including in Mexico, Brunei, Cuba, Singapore, the Netherlands, and Ukraine. Notably, she served as the keynote speaker for the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands’ inaugural Martin Luther King Jr. Day Celebration.
Nance is a Fellow of the College of Labor and Employment Lawyers and immediate past President of its Board of Governors. She serves on the American Bar Association Board of Governors, including its Pension Committee, and is a member of the ABA House of Delegates. She is an elected member of the American Law Institute and The Labor Law Group, where she recently completed service on the Executive Committee. She also served for six years on the Arkansas Advisory Committee to the United States Commission on Civil Rights. A past Chair of the American Bar Foundation Fellows, she currently serves as a State Chair and is a former Eighth Circuit member of the ABA Standing Committee on the Federal Judiciary.
An Arkansas Television Commissioner, Nance has also served on the Arkansas Bar Foundation Trust Committee and on the Council of the ABA Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar, including service on its 2025–2026 Special Advisory Committee. Her additional legal service includes the ABA Commission on Homelessness and Poverty and the National Association for Law Placement Foundation Board. She was appointed by the Arkansas Supreme Court to the Arkansas Judges and Lawyers Assistance Program Committee, where she currently serves. Her additional affiliations include membership in the Arkansas Chapter of the International Women’s Forum, Harold Flowers Law Society, an affiliate of the National Bar Association, Hispanic National Bar Association, NAPABA and service as a board member of the Arkansas Women’s Hall of Fame. She previously served on the boards of WelcomeHealth and Bikes, Blues & Barbecue of Northwest Arkansas.
She has demonstrated a strong commitment to expanding access to legal education through her philanthropy. She endowed the Eual Dean and Fern Nance Scholarship at the University of Arkansas School of Law in honor of her parents and established the Dennis Shields Scholarship at the University of Iowa College of Law, recognizing the admissions leader who first opened the door to her legal education.
Additional examples of her commitment to service include prior service on the Law School Admission Council Board of Trustees; as a Council member and Section Delegate of the ABA Section of Labor and Employment Law; on the Interfaith Worker Justice Board; and on the Advisory Committee on Corporate Social Responsibility of the Evangelical Lutheran Church. She also served as an Anti-Racism Trainer for the Women of the Evangelical Lutheran Church.
She has been widely recognized for her service and leadership. Her honors include the 2025 Sistas-in-Law Lifetime Achievement Award and Flame of Justice Awards; the 2024 John L. Colbert Lifetime Achievement Award from the Northwest Arkansas Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Council and Arkansas JLAP Distinguished Service Award; the 2023 Association of American Law Schools’ Ruth Bader Ginsburg Lifetime Achievement Award and the Carrying on the Legacy Award from the Harold Flowers Law Society; the 2021 Richard S. Arnold Award for Distinguished Service in the Western District of Arkansas from the Eighth Circuit Bar Association and the University of Iowa Hancher-Finkbine Medallion; the 2018 American Bar Association Margaret Brent Women Lawyers of Achievement Award; the 2017 Arkansas Bar Association Presidential Award of Excellence and Alpha Kappa Alpha’s Mary Louise Williams Guiding Star for Public Service Award; the 2016 Community Leader Award from the Northwest Arkansas Worker Justice Center; the 2014 Individual Educator Achievement Award from the Northwest Arkansas Democratic Black Caucus; the 2012 American Bar Association Spirit of Excellence Award; the 2007 Arthur A. Fletcher Award from the American Association for Affirmative Action; the 2005 Arkansas Bar Association Outstanding Lawyer-Citizen Award; and the University of Arkansas’s 2004 Faculty Distinguished Achievement Award for Public Service.
She has previously received the Northwest Arkansas Martin Luther King, Jr. Commission Individual Achievement Award and has been recognized as one of Diverse Issues in Higher Education’s “25 Women Making a Difference,” a “Woman of Influence” by Arkansas Business, and one of the most influential lawyers on Twitter by On Being a Black Lawyer. She has also been named one of Arkansas’s “12 Most Powerful Women” by AY Magazine and Talk Business & Politics. Nance is the inaugural recipient of the Harold Flowers Association’s Judge Andree Layton Roaf Award of Excellence and a recipient of the University of Arkansas Women Law Students’ Gayle Pettus Pontz Award. In 2009, the Black Law Students Association named its chapter in her honor.
