Kristi Arth

Biography

Kristi W. Arth is an Assistant Dean for Experiential Learning & Associate Professor of Law Learning at Belmont Law. Professor Arth’s scholarship focuses on issues in modern litigation, as well as the intersection of art and the law. She is the co-author of one of the leading treatises in Tennessee, Privileges and Protections: Tennessee and Sixth Circuit Law. Her textbook, Legal Issues for Arts Organizations, has been used to teach legal issues to arts administration students in universities across the country. Her other work has been published in the Gonzaga Law Review, as well as The Routledge Companion to Decolonizing Art, Craft, and Visual Culture Education. At Belmont Law, Professor Arth wrote the Speer Foundation grant to establish the Healthcare Justice Clinic. She also founded the Legal Fiction Workshop, which has produced two national winners of the ABA Journal Ross Writing Contest for Legal Short Fiction. Professor Arth has been recognized as one of the top forty young lawyers in the nation by the ABA Young Lawyers Division’s “On the Rise” Award (2022). She is also a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation.

Prior to joining Belmont Law, Professor Arth was a partner with Bradley LLP, where she practiced in the civil litigation and intellectual property practice groups. She regularly tried cases in federal and state court and represented clients on appeal to the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, the Tennessee Court of Appeals, and the Tennessee Supreme Court. She also prosecuted and defended intellectual property assets before the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office, the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board, and the U.S. Copyright Office.

Professor Arth earned her J.D., as well as an M.A. in arts policy and administration, from The Ohio State University where she was named to the Order of the Coif. At Ohio State, she served on the managing board of the law review and was awarded the ABA-BNA Award for Excellence in the Study of Intellectual Property Law. She graduated summa cum laude with a B.A. in English and a minor in creative writing from the University of Alabama, where she won numerous awards and founded the Creative Campus Initiative, which operated from 2006 to 2018.

Courses Taught

• Legal Information & Communication I
• Legal Information & Communication II
• Field Placements
• Summer Externships
• Intellectual Property
• Law & Literature

Areas of Expertise

• Evidentiary Privileges
• Legal Writing
• Intellectual Property
• Trademarks
• Experiential Learning
• Legal Storytelling
• Attorney Wellness

SSRN

PRESENTATIONS

Kristi Arth, The Art in the Injunction: The Legal Cases Behind Confederate Monument Removals, Presentation at the Social Theory, Politics & the Arts Conference (Oct. 12, 2019).

PUBLICATIONS

Kristi Arth and E. Todd Presnell, Privileges and Protections: Tennessee and Sixth Circuit Law (2024).

Kristi Arth, Chapter 10: From Art to Artifact: A Sestina on Public Art Policy in Confederate Monument Removal Case Law, in Routledge Companion to Decolonizing Art, Craft, and Visual Culture Education (2023)

Kristi Arth, The Art of the Matter: A Linguistic Analysis of Public Art Policy in Confederate Monument Removal Case Law, 56 GONZ. L. REV. 1 (2020) | SSRN

Kristi Arth, The Effect of a Symbolically Isomorphic Name Label in Implementing a Creative Campus Initiative: A Comparative Case Study Analysis (2011), https://etd.ohiolink.edu/pg_10?::NO:10:P10_ETD_SUBID:74588.