Fast 15: Katie Eaves

Growing up, Katie Eaves’ interest was in fine arts, and after being recognized as one of the state’s top soprano voices while competing at Fayetteville High School, she received a full scholarship to attend the University of Arkansas.

In 2009, she earned a bachelor’s degree in music for vocal performance. Unsure of what career path to take at that point, she moved to Chicago, where she secured a job as a paralegal for boutique law firm Wexler Wallace.

 “I didn’t know the difference between a plaintiff and a defendant,” she joked.

It may not have been an immediate career match, but in just one year at the firm, Eaves was bitten by the law bug. She returned home and earned a law degree from the UA in 2013 — graduating cum laude — before adding a Master of Laws in taxation from the University of Florida in 2014.

Now an up-and-comer at KMBSP, Eaves will celebrate two years with the firm in August. In that time she has revamped the firm’s website and has been given oversight of the firm’s clerk program as well as its marketing efforts.

Eaves spends between 60 and 70 percent of her work focusing on estate and wealth planning. Since she began with the firm, she estimates completing more than 150 estate plans for clients.

“Katie has an exemplary attention to detail, and her organization is second to none in our office,” said colleague George Rozzell, one of the firm’s attorneys. “I would trust her with my estate, and faced with such a prospect, have, in fact, done so.”

Eaves also works in the firm’s taxation section and has expanded the practice within the firm to include elder law.

Her five-year plan is to become a partner.

“That is my ultimate goal, and I think I am on that track,” she said. “I think my boss has that plan, too, so that’s even better.”

Eaves, who married in 2012, is a member of several boards including Bentonville Library Foundation and Circle of Life Foundation. She’s also the founding member of the Nonprofit Change Project, which educates some of the smaller nonprofits among the approximately 2,500 in Northwest Arkansas on how to become sustainable organizations.