A Wider Lens: How Erica Hawkins Broadened Her View of Legal Work

Erica Hawkins sat across the metal table from a man awaiting trial inside the federal courthouse, listening as he talked about the choices and circumstances that had brought him there.

For months, Hawkins had studied cases in classrooms at the UA Little Rock William H. Bowen School of Law, reading opinions, analyzing arguments and learning the mechanics of legal procedure. At the courthouse, the work felt different. The complaints and motions she had spent so much time reading were no longer abstract documents inside a case file.

“There’s a person behind the complaint that comes across your desk,” Hawkins said. “When you’re talking to them, you realize sometimes that it was just one misstep along the way that completely changed the trajectory of someone’s life.”

The externship became one of the defining experiences of Hawkins’ time at Bowen Law, not because it pointed her toward a single career path, but because it showed her how differently the profession could look in practice than it did in classrooms and casebooks.

As Hawkins prepares to graduate this weekend, she leaves Bowen with a broader view of the legal profession than the one she carried into law school.

Law school was not always the plan.

Hawkins arrived at Central Baptist College intending to pursue physical therapy before realizing the coursework was pulling her in the wrong direction. An uncle working in government law encouraged her to take the LSAT, and the possibility of a legal career quickly clicked into place. She graduated from Central Baptist with a degree in business management before enrolling in law school.

Growing up in Stuttgart, Hawkins said her parents, both educators and administrators, made sure she understood where she came from and the barriers some people still faced around her. Her father became the first Black administrator in one of the school districts where he worked. Her mother also stepped into leadership roles where representation mattered.

“I felt like I was living in Black history in the making,” Hawkins said.

The experiences shaped her early interest in civil rights and public-facing legal work, but Hawkins said she entered law school determined not to limit herself too quickly to one version of the profession.

Some of the courses Hawkins expected to enjoy never fully clicked. Others surprised her. Contracts and business associations quickly became some of her strongest areas academically, building on the business background she brought with her from college. Criminal law and criminal procedure also came naturally to her, even though she never envisioned herself working in those spaces professionally.

“A lot of things on paper didn’t sound appealing,” Hawkins said. “But once I got to experience those areas of law, it changed the way I thought about them.”

That growing interest in transactional and business-related work also reshaped the way Hawkins thought about impact. She said she had long seen talented people with strong business ideas struggle to access the resources and opportunities needed to move those ideas forward.

Hawkins said law school helped her recognize that work connected to contracts, licensing and access to funding can shape communities in quieter but equally meaningful ways. Through clerkships at firms of different sizes, Hawkins also saw how differently legal work could operate depending on the environment, the clients and the type of cases involved.

“I had to be intentional about not getting complacent in what I thought I knew,” she said.

Hawkins said that same willingness to reevaluate herself became important during her externship at the federal courthouse, where a miscommunication challenged the way she believed she was coming across in the workplace.

“It would have been easy for me to just shut down,” Hawkins said. “But I had to take a step back and ask myself, ‘OK, what are you actually doing? How are people perceiving what you’re doing?’”

Hawkins said those experiences changed the way she approached both the work and the people helping her navigate it. Two faculty members became especially influential during Hawkins’ time at Bowen Law.

Dean Beiner provided the kind of steady support Hawkins said every student needs, offering guidance that extended beyond academics and coursework. “Her door was always open,” Hawkins said. “I think that’s important for every student to have, a member of faculty that you can go to and just talk to as a person.”

Professor Cain challenged her differently. A former college athlete, Hawkins said she has always responded well to pressure and high expectations. During her second semester of 1L year, she remembered Cain telling her he had heard strong things about her and expected her to succeed.

“You’re going to be good at this,” he told her.

For Hawkins, hearing that from a professor with Cain’s reputation carried weight, not because she needed reassurance she belonged, but because she valued being pushed by people who expected her to rise to the occasion.

Now, as graduation approaches, Hawkins said she no longer feels pressure to define her future too narrowly. She still sees herself in the values that first drew her toward the law, but her time at Bowen showed her those goals can take shape through many different kinds of legal work.

Hawkins said she still does not know exactly where the profession will take her after graduation. But after three years of clerkships, coursework and courtroom experience, she feels more prepared for whatever comes next.

“I’m a lot more capable of handling things than I was giving myself credit for,” Hawkins said.