Salt Lake City Attorney Ruth Lybbert Renlund is former president of the law firm Dewsnup, King & Olsen, a firm she helped form and where she practiced plaintiff civil litigation for 20 years. Before this, she was for three years assistant attorney general of the State of Utah and served on the board of directors for the Deseret News, Murdock Travel, and the Workers Compensation Fund of Utah. She was a member of the Utah Supreme Court’s Committee on Professionalism and chair of the Judicial Conduct Commission for the State of Utah. She was the first female president of the Utah Trial Lawyers Association.
After receiving a bachelor’s degree in history and a teaching certificate from the University of Utah, Ruth taught high school English and debate in Utah for a time, before earning a juris doctorate from the University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law, where she was a member of the national moot court team and received the William P. Cunningham Award in recognition of exceptional achievement and service to the law school.
In February 2016 Ruth delivered a lecture "Think about It: The Value of Law School" at the Women in Law Luncheon at BYU Law School. Introducing her at this event, Professor RonNell Andersen Jones noted her importance as a role model, her reputation for courtesy, and her exemplary professional and personal life. Ruth Lybbert Renlund "has been praised by those who know her personally and professionally." said Professor Jones, "as a strong and talented litigator who never lost sight of the need for stability in the profession."
Ruth was the keynote speaker at the 2017 Annual fireside of the J. Reuben Clark Law Society in Salt Lake City, where she received the society's Exemplary Leadership Award. In introducing her at this event, her former law partner Ralph Dewsnup said, "Ruth's work as a trial lawyer was enormously influential, with her clients, with her partners, and in the profession," and praised her as tempering the bombast that occasionally surrounded her, bringing order to every form of chaos. "Ruth is civil, cultured, classy, smart, organized, loyal, creative, and fun. Her talents were recognized everywhere she went. . . . She led in a crisp, compassionate, thoughtful way . . . she waded in to problems to solve them, and solve them she did."
Ruth is married to Elder Dale G. Renlund of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. She has served with her husband in assignments including five years in the presidency of the Church's Africa Southeast Area, with headquarters in Johannesburg, South Africa. The Renlunds are the parents of a daughter, Ashley.