Kelly Browe Olson

Professor of Law;
Mediation Clinic Director

(501) 916-5451 | Room 105K
Email: [email protected]
Faculty Assistant: Sarah E. Purdiman | Room 105G | (501) 916-5404 | [email protected]

Curriculum Vitae

Kelly Browe Olson is a law professor and the Mediation Clinic Director. She oversees a state-wide IDEA Special Education Facilitation and Mediation project. In addition to directing the Mediation Clinic, she teaches Lawyering Foundations, Family Law, Mediation and Negotiation Seminars, ADR, and Domestic Violence courses. She helped create the UA Little Rock Graduate Certificate Program in Conflict Mediation. A recent graduate of the UA Little Rock’s Academic Leadership Academy, she has been asked to participate next year as a speaker. She is a passionate advocate who focuses on educating law students, judges, lawyers, and other professionals on conflict resolution, communication and emotional intelligence.

Professor Browe Olson serves on the Arkansas Access to Justice Commission and the editorial board of the Family Court Review. She is a senior advisor for CADRE, the Center for Dispute Resolution in Education and works with the National Conference of Bar Examiners on NextGen Bar Exam development. She recently finished 3 years on the taskforce that created the updated 2025 Model Standards for Family and Divorce Mediation. She has served as the chair of the Arkansas Parent Counsel Commission, on the Association of Family and Conciliation Courts (AFCC) executive board and the editorial board of the American Bar Association (ABA) Section of Dispute Resolution Magazine. She was the president of the Arkansas Conflict Resolution Association, the co-chair of the American Bar Association Section on Dispute Resolution annual conference and on the executive board of the AALS ADR Section. In Arkansas she is a consultant for ongoing juvenile mediation projects for the Administrative Office of the Courts and has served on numerous boards and subcommittees for the Arkansas Administrative Office of the Courts’ Court Improvement Project; the Arkansas Alternative Dispute Resolution Commission; the Arkansas Access to Justice Commission; Arkansas Coalition Against Domestic Violence and the Arkansas Women’s Leadership Forum. Nationally she has been a resource for the ABA Section on Dispute Resolution, AFCC, the Family Court Review and the National Child Welfare Decision-Making Network. She won the Bowen School of Law Faculty Excellence Award for Public Service in 2004 and 2013.

Professor Browe Olson is a frequent national speaker and trainer on communication, mediation, domestic violence and children’s legal issues. Before coming to Bowen, she was the Child Law Mediation Projects Coordinator and taught clinical and ADR courses at Loyola University Chicago School of Law, where she also served as a senior editor of the Loyola Children’s Rights Journal and held a graduate fellowship. Before entering academia, Professor Browe Olson spent three years working as an attorney, director and general counsel at Hilltop Communications, a small telecommunications company.