Amanda Eklund, Eklund Law Office
Amanda Eklund was born and raised in Fairbanks. After graduating from law school, she completed two judicial clerkships and then went to work briefly at the general counsel’s office for the University of Alaska. In 2009, she was hired as a hearing officer with the Workers’ Compensation Division in Fairbanks, a position she held for six years. In 2015, she was appointed Chief of Adjudications and relocated to Anchorage. Though she enjoyed and greatly appreciated her time with the Division, on December 1, 2017 she took the terrifying leap into solo private practice representing injured workers. She is grateful to be among such a capable and professional community within the Division and the Anchorage bar and looks forward to working with all of you from the other side of the hearing table. When she’s not working, Amanda enjoys reading, hiking, cooking, exploring Anchorage with her four children, and extolling the virtues of the paradise that is Fairbanks, Alaska.
Colby Smith
Colby Smith was born and raised in Georgia and eventually found himself in Ketchikan, Alaska, clerking for Judge Thompson. After climbing a few mountains, he began working in Juneau, Alaska, initially with the Special Litigation Torts Division of the Attorney General’s Office, and then at the law firm of Lessmeier & Winters. The firm was gracious enough to allow Colby to hold his own briefcase by contracting with the City of Juneau to handle the City’s public defense work. In 2002, he joined Bob Griffin, eventually forming Griffin & Smith in the samemonth his twinswere born. He has a active civil defense practice with an emphasis on representing employers in workers’ compensation cases. He maintains some of his greatest successes were the cases resolved prior to being litigated. He additionally credits good decisions and outcomes as a result ofmaintaining a consensus within his office. This is his sixth year presentin at the annual workers’ compensation CLE. He often feels as though the CLE preparation work is analogous to studying for the bar exam, but unfortunately even if you do well, you have to do it again. Colby thrives doing various activities including shrimping, fishing, watching his kids play lots of soccer, and running. If anyone has ever spoken to Colby about shrimping or fishing, they will know the word “thrives” does not belong. He is particularly proud that he has been “running” on insulin since 1979.
Steve Constantino
Steve Constantino’s first job in Alaska was as a newspaper reporter for theTundra Drums, the primary news source at the time in the Yukon Kuskokwim Delta. H joined the Alaska Bar in 1981. In the mid-1980s he was the managingpartner of “Otto and Constantino,” a general practice law firm in Bethel. Following a sabbatical inEurope, inthe lat 1990s he serve as an Alaska Workers’ Compensation Board hearing officerand authored decision that Board panels continue to cite today, includingGranus v. Fell. For thepast 18 years, h has representedemployees in workers compensation claims.
