Randall Bynum has been an accountant, managed the family furniture business, started his own law firm and been appointed as an Arkansas public service commissioner.
All those public and private sector roles shaped his insight into business and legal matters and prepared him for his existing role as partner at law firm Wright, Lindsey & Jennings LLP in Little Rock.
From Siloam Springs, Bynum got an accounting degree from the University of Arkansas in 1982, then worked for a Big Eight accounting firm in Tulsa before getting his law degree. He graduated from The George Washington University Law School in Washington, D.C., in 1989. Bynum worked for Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton law firm in Washington, D.C., until moving to Little Rock in 1993 to work for the Rose Law Firm. A few years later he got out of law and went to work with his father in the family business, Bynum Home Furnishings, in Siloam Springs.
Appointed to the Arkansas Public Service Commission by Gov. Mike Huckabee in 2003, he served four years as one of three commissioners. The commission regulates public utilities that provide electric, gas, telecommunications, water and sewer services to Arkansas consumers.
Bynum opened his own law firm in 2007, and after significant growth, in 2012, merged with Little Rock law firm Dover Dixon Horne, where he became partner. In January 2022 Dover Dixon Horne merged with Wright, Lindsey & Jennings.
Bynum’s experience on the Arkansas Public Service Commission in utility regulation and energy law led him “to represent different companies and entities before the public service commission, and I do some general business law. But it typically involves some type of energy,” he said. “I’ve done a lot of solar projects in the past and am now working with a client that’s developing data centers in Arkansas. I’ve worked with a client doing a carbon credit project in Arkansas. So primarily anything to do with energy, renewable energy.”
Bynum is also helping companies develop natural gas pipelines in Arkansas that will eventually provide natural gas to gas-fired generators, “because with the closure of the two large coal plants we have in Arkansas, the state needs to replace that energy,” he said.
Bynum finds his work “intellectually stimulating” and so at 65 has no thought of retiring.
Over his 36-year career he’s seen great changes in technology with the use of computerized research and email. “When I first started out, we had email, but it was basically within the firm. Now most of my communications on a day-to-day basis are done by email,” he said. “And now AI is getting involved with law, especially with research, which represents some challenges, too, because it’s very good as a starting point. But I always check the results because AI has been known to hallucinate and make up stuff.”
A member of the Northwest Arkansas Business Journal’s Forty Under 40 inaugural class in 1997, Bynum was recognized in the peer-reviewed The Best Lawyers in America 2025 for his work in administrative/regulatory law. Only 3% of all attorneys globally earn the honor. He was selected to Super Lawyers for 2020 – 2025, an organization that recognizes the top 5% of attorneys in each state, chosen through peer review and independent research.
Within the legal community Bynum serves on the Infrastructure & Regulated Industries and the Business Law Sections of the American Bar Association, the Administrative Law Section of the Arkansas Bar Association and is a member of the Board of Trustees for the Arkansas Bar Association. In 2019 he was appointed by Gov. Asa Hutchinson to serve as special justice on the Arkansas Supreme Court.
A commissioner for the Arkansas Capitol Arts and Grounds Commission, Bynum helped recommend the artists to create statues of Daisy Bates and Johnny Cash to represent Arkansas in the U.S. Capitol. He was also a member of the Arkansas Repertory Theatre board for six years.
A certified tribal member of the Cherokee Nation through his paternal grandmother, Bynum has three adult children and two grandbabies. In his spare time, he enjoys running and playing golf.