Forty Under 40: Lauren Oswalt Baber

If she’d followed the prominent career choice within her family, you would be reading about Lauren Baber, the successful doctor.

“I did think about that [career], but I have an aversion to blood,” she joked.

Instead, Baber is one of the region’s top civil defense attorneys. A litigator for over a decade, she focuses her practice on insurance, transportation, construction, and general liability matters, managing between 20 and 30 cases at any given time.

She defines success in her work as getting results a client wants and appreciates.

“That’s what I love about litigating,” she said. “Sometimes, it’s a settlement. Sometimes it’s an outright win. Whatever is best for the client.”

A Texas native, Baber moved to Northwest Arkansas nearly 20 years ago to attend the University of Arkansas. She graduated in 2007 with an apparel studies degree but almost immediately began to think about law school.

Baber graduated magna cum laude from the UA School of Law in 2011 and was a teaching assistant in her third year. At graduation, she received the Trial Advocacy Award.

She went to work immediately for a small Fayetteville firm. Dallas-based Mayer, with approximately 90 attorneys in five offices, acquired the former Deacon Law Firm in March 2021.

Baber has been a single mom for over five years, raising three kids under the age of 8, all while on track to becoming a partner at the firm. She is also the Fayetteville office’s representative to Mayer’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) committee.

Baber is a longtime supporter of the Single Parent Scholarship Fund of Northwest Arkansas, where she is a community ambassador.