Lynette Perez is an experienced trial attorney licensed in both Texas and Arkansas. She practices primarily in Little Rock and throughout central Arkansas. She has worked as both a prosecutor and criminal defense attorney in serious felony cases involving both children and adults. She has testified as an expert witness in cases involving child abuse and neglect cases.
Prior to moving to Arkansas, she worked as an attorney and mediator representing individuals and facilitating settlements in family, child custody, child welfare and juvenile justice cases in eight counties throughout south Texas, including Bexar County. Before her life as a lawyer, Attorney Perez worked in both city and county government in Las Vegas, Nevada for 15 years. She is a former Assistant City Manager for the City of Las Vegas. In 1999, she became the first woman elected to lead a City Council ward in the history of that city. She is also a former Clark County Commissioner. President George W. Bush appointed her as one of his six citizen trustees of the United States Naval Academy to serve with 12 members of Congress. She is a past board member of the Miss America Organization.
Attorney Perez received her bachelor’s degree from the University of Notre Dame and a master’s degree in Public Administration, cum laude, from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. She received her Juris Doctorate degree from St. Mary’s University School of Law in San Antonio. She is a former judicial intern to the Honorable Rebecca Simmons of the Texas Fourth Court of Appeals; former judicial extern to Chief Justice Piper Griffin, Orleans Parish Civil District Court, Louisiana; and former law clerk in the trial division of the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia. She served both as a staff writer (Volume 42) and associate editor (Volume 43) of the St. Mary’s Law Journal. She is the 2012 recipient of the Judge Jack Miller Award, presented by the St. Mary’s Law Faculty Advocacy Committee and one of 10 in her law school graduation class inducted into the National Order of Barristers.
As a graduate student at the University of Oregon School of Journalism, Lynette Boggs-Perez, then Miss Portland, was crowned Miss Oregon 1989. She competed in and was a national finalist for the first ever Quality of Life Award presented at the 1990 Miss America Pageant.
Attorney Perez is a past District 7 Trustee and Board Secretary of the Judson Independent School District. She maintains professional memberships in the State Bar of Texas, the State Bar of Arkansas, San Antonio Black Lawyers Association (SABLA) and the W.H. Flowers Law Society in Arkansas. Attorney Perez is one of two recipients of the 2018 “Future Legends In the Law” Award presented by the San Antonio Black Lawyers Association. She was named a Top Criminal Defense Lawyer in 2020 by Scene in San Antonio Magazine and a 2021 Rising Star by Super Lawyers – both distinctions selected and nominated by peers in the field of criminal law.
Attorney Perez and her husband Eli are the co-owners of Hammer & Gavel LLC, a full-service construction and real estate investment company with properties in Texas, Arkansas and Nevada and remodeling projects in central Arkansas. Together, they are the parents of eight adults.
