Early Life & Career

Arneda Perkins grew up in Oklahoma, where she attended Wagoner High School and graduated in the top 10% of her senior class. A gifted writer, she earned the Creative Writing Award for Most Depth and claimed First Place in the Oklahoma Historical Society state writing competition — early indicators of the sharp analytical voice she would carry into her legal career. She went on to earn a Bachelor of Arts in Business Administration from Westminster College, where she served in student government and was recognized with the Leadership Award.

Legal Training

Nearly thirty years after first dreaming of becoming a lawyer in high school, Arneda made that dream a reality at Mitchell Hamline School of Law, where she earned her Juris Doctor in 2024. At Mitchell Hamline, she threw herself into the legal community with the same energy that defined her earlier academic years — volunteering with the Minnesota Justice Foundation, serving as a Student Leader for Academic Excellence, and acting as Executive Editor of the Mitchell Hamline Intellectual Property Law Review Journal. She also externed with West Academic, where she contributed to the editing of the 2023 edition of an intellectual property publication. Arneda has been admitted to practice in Texas (2024), Oklahoma (2025), and the Southern District of Texas (2026), with active practice beginning in Texas in 2025.

Career at Smith Clinesmith

Arneda joins Smith Clinesmith as an Associate Attorney, focusing her practice on municipal law and consumer protection. Her path to the law was anything but ordinary — shaped by nearly three decades of life experience before she ever set foot in a law school classroom — and that perspective informs everything about how she shows up for clients. A proud member of the State Bar of Texas, the Oklahoma Bar Association, the American Bar Association, the Dallas Bar Association, and the International Association of Privacy Professionals, Arneda brings both institutional depth and personal purpose to her work, committed to advocating for those who need it most.