UNLV Law Magazine 2017

+ UNLV IMMIGRATION CLINIC LENDS A HELPING HAND TO MINORS IN NEED + MEET OUR FOUR NEW FACULTY MEMBERS

UNLV Law THE MAGAZINE OF THE WILLIAM S. BOYD SCHOOL OF LAW | 2017

BACK TO SCHOOL

After a long and illustrious political career, U.S. Senator Harry Reid returns to his legal roots as UNLV’s first Distinguished Fellow in Law and Policy

UNLV Law

NEED A HELPING HAND TO MINORS IN + UNLV IMMIGRATION CLINIC LENDS FACULTY MEMBERS + MEET OUR FOUR NEW

UNLV Law THE MAGAZINE OF THE WILLIAM

2017

S. BOYD SCHOOL OF LAW | 2017

features BACK TO SCHOOL

career, U.S. Senator Harry Reid returns After a long and illustrious political Fellow in Law and Policy to his legal roots as UNLV’s first Distinguished

ON THE COVER

U.S. Senator Harry Reid poses in the Thomas & Mack Moot Courtroom with Boyd students (left to right) Ellsie Lucero, Michael Linton, Stephanie Glantz, and Homero Gonzalez.

(Josh Hawkins/ UNLV Photo Services)

NEVADA BOARD OF REGENTS UNLV appreciates the leadership and support of our Nevada System of Higher Education Board of Regents.

Kevin J. Page, Chairman Jason Geddes, Ph.D.,Vice Chairman Dr. Andrea Anderson Dr. Patrick Carter Cedric Crear Carol Del Carlo Mark W. Doubrava, M.D. Trevor Hayes Sam Lieberman Cathy McAdoo John T. Moran Allison Stephens Rick Trachok Dean J. Gould, Chief of Staff and Special Counsel to the Board

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WE ARE BOYD

At UNLV Law, a diverse group of future lawyers with different career aspirations share one common goal: to someday make a meaningful impact on the legal community. Meet four students who are on their way to doing just that.

Contents features

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... AND JUSTICE FOR ALL

With help from student attorneys, the staff at the UNLV Immigration Clinic provides support to young clients who are desperate to start life anew in the United States.

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LEGALLY BINDING

Before embarking on a career in politics that took him to the pinnacle of the U.S. Senate, Harry Reid was a successful Las Vegas attorney. Here’s the inside scoop of his life in law.

departments

3 FROM THE DEAN’S DESK 5 OPENING ARGUMENT 6 CENTERS & CLINICS 12 GIVING BACK 13 WHO KNEW? 34 FACULTY FOCUS 42 THE GALLERY 46 CLASS ACTIONS 52 DONORS 2017 | UNLV Law

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BY THE NUMBERS 2 3 6 9

NATIONAL RANKING OF OUR LEGAL WRITING PROGRAM BY U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT NATIONAL RANKING BY LAW.COM OF U.S. LAW SCHOOLS WHO PLACE STUDENTS IN STATE COURT CLERKSHIPS NATIONAL RANKING OF LAW SCHOOLS WITH THE HIGHEST YIELD RATES FOR FULL-TIME STUDENTS BY U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT NATIONAL RANKING OF OUR DISPUTE RESOLUTION PROGRAM BY U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT

92.2

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PERCENTAGE OF UNLV LAW STUDENTS EMPLOYED UPON GRADUATION

OUR RANKING ON THE NATIONAL JURIST’S LIST OF BEST VALUE SCHOOLS

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NATIONAL RANKING OF OUR PART-TIME JD PROGRAM BY U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT

NATIONAL RANKING OF OUR FACULTY IN A SCHOLARLY IMPACT STUDY — OUR FACULTY HAS AUTHORED MORE THAN 250 BOOKS AND BOOK CHAPTERS AND MORE THAN 600 LAW REVIEW ARTICLES

2,200+ ALUMNI 2

UNLV Law | 2017

A MESSAGE FROM DEAN DANIEL W. HAMILTON

FROM THE DEAN’S DESK

A Life in Law

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hy go to law school?”

It’s the question all attorneys need to answer from the moment they first express a desire to seek a legal education.

There are myriad responses to this query, of course— most of them as lengthy and detailed as a Supreme Court opinion. So imagine my delight when I saw the following quote that appears in the cover story of this year’s UNLV Law magazine: “Law school,” said former U.S. Senator Harry Reid, “is good preparation for basically anything you want to do.”

How succinct. How inspiring. How true. And if anybody would know, it’s Senator Reid.

While most Nevadans know him as the longest-tenured U.S. senator—and quite likely the most important, impactful and influential politician—in our state’s history, few realize that Reid is first and foremost a lawyer.

Long before he entered the political fray, the native of Searchlight, Nevada, was a prominent—and highly successful—Las Vegas attorney.

This year, upon resigning his Senate seat after 30 years, Reid returned to his legal roots by joining the UNLV William S. Boyd School of Law as its first Distinguished Fellow in Law and Policy. In his new role, Reid will draw on his vast legal and policymaking experience to educate and inspire Boyd students, faculty, and alumni. We couldn’t be more thrilled to welcome Senator Reid to the Boyd family, and we celebrate that fact with a compelling cover story that highlights his life and career in law.

The addition of Senator Reid tops another long list of significant achievements and positive advancements for UNLV Law over the past year. Most notably, we climbed another 16 spots to No. 62 in this year’s U.S. News & World Reports rankings of 197 accredited law schools. While these types of rankings can be highly subjective, this positive momentum is good news for the law school.

Even more meaningful, though, is the fact UNLV Law continues to have the No. 2 legal writing and No. 9 dispute-resolution programs in the land—ratings that were determined by experts in the field and that affirm the exceptional work of our faculty.

I’ve honestly lost count of the number of times I’ve heard from employers who are genuinely impressed by our graduates’ writing abilities, so I can’t say I’m entirely surprised by our ranking there. Same goes for the respect given to our Saltman Center for Conflict Resolution. Thanks to the generosity of Michael and Sonja Saltman, our students continue to receive expert training in the art of conflict resolution, a vital skill in an age when law is becoming less about litiga-

tion and more about problemsolving and negotiation.

Another of UNLV Law’s many valuable programs that we profile in this issue is our Immigration Clinic. As more and more undocumented children are appearing in court without representation, the Immigration Clinic continues to work in concert with our partners at the Legal Aid Center of Southern Nevada to meet an increasingly critical community need. Unfortunately, the federal AmeriCorps grant that funded the clinic was eliminated by the current administration. But the good news is, respected local attorney Edward Bernstein came to the rescue with a donation that will keep the clinic running for at least the next five years.

Always looking for ways to enhance our students’ experiences and meet their demands, UNLV Law this year welcomes four new concentrations: Health Law, Dispute Resolution, Workplace Law, and Intellectual Property Law. You’ll learn more about these new specialties and why they’re important in the pages that follow. And while we’re on the subject of welcoming, we also introduce you to several of our newest faculty members through informative profiles.

Finally, as we begin to look ahead to our landmark 20th anniversary next year—wow, 20 years!—I’d be remiss if I didn’t take a moment to acknowledge our distinguished alumni, which now number more than 2,200. From the courtroom to the bench to the state Legislature and far beyond, our graduates continue to benefit Nevada’s legal community. Just ask Christopher Hicks, who was a part of UNLV Law’s charter class in 1998 and who now serves as the 37th District Attorney of Washoe County in Northern Nevada.

Hicks penned this year’s Opening Argument, in which he eloquently expresses his gratitude for his time at Boyd and enthusiastically notes the ways in which his fellow alums are making their mark up and down the Silver State—including in his office.

Upon reading Hicks’ column, I couldn’t help but double back to Senator Reid’s declaration about the importance of pursuing a legal degree: “Law school is good preparation for basically anything you want to do.” I couldn’t agree more!

Daniel W. Hamilton Dean and Richard J. Morgan Professor of Law Learn more: Read Boyd Briefs, a weekly newsletter from Dean Dan spotlighting Boyd faculty, students, and alumni. Subscribe at law.unlv.edu/BoydBriefs.

UNLV LAW MAGAZINE EDITOR MATT JACOB ASSOCIATE EDITOR MICHAEL BERTETTO GRAPHIC DESIGNER CHED WHITNEY CONTRIBUTING WRITERS STEVE BORNFELD CAMILLE CANNON PATRICK EVERSON ALEZA FREEMAN LAUNCE RAKE STEVE SEBELIUS CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHERS JOSHUA HAWKINS CONNIE PALEN R. MARSH STARKS UNLV PRESIDENT LEN JESSUP EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT & PROVOST DIANE CHASE DEAN, WILLIAM S. BOYD SCHOOL OF LAW DANIEL W. HAMILTON SUBSCRIBER UPDATES Update your address and submit Class Actions items at: law.unlv.edu/alumni/ StayConnected READER FEEDBACK UNLV Law magazine welcomes feedback from readers. Submit comments at: law.unlv.edu/magazine UNLV Law magazine is published by the UNLV William S. Boyd School of Law, Office of Communications 4505 S. Maryland Parkway, Box 451003, Las Vegas, Nevada 89154-1003 (702) 895-3671 law.unlv.edu UNLV is an AA/EEO INSTITUTION

2017 | UNLV Law

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MASTER OF LAWS (LL.M.): GAMING LAW AND REGULATION

Why should you pursue an LL.M. in Gaming Law? The UNLV William S. Boyd School of Law offers a Master of Laws (LL.M.) in Gaming Law and Regulation. The first of its kind in the nation, the LL.M. program provides students with a unique educational experience in the expanding, worldwide industry of gaming and builds on the concentration of gaming resources and expertise at UNLV and in Nevada.

• Technology Innovation: The online gaming infrastructure and its related applications are developing at a rapid pace. Lawyers and industry professionals must anticipate technological advancements and their impacts on regulators and on the industry.

• Global Gaming: Gaming is a booming, multibillion-dollar industry within the United States, and it also continues to flourish worldwide.

• Career Development: Gaming industry growth has created a need for lawyers who are experts in gaming law.

LEARN MORE:

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UNLV Law | 2017

law.unlv.edu/GamingLaw

A PROMINENT MEMBER OF NEVADA’S LEGAL COMMUNITY PRESENTS A COMPELLING CASE

OPENING ARGUMENT

GUEST COLUMN | CHRISTOPHER J. HICKS WASHOE COUNTY DISTRICT ATTORNEY

D

The Role Boyd Plays

uring the Independence Day weekend this summer, I was enjoying a beautiful afternoon with family and friends on the deck of my family’s vacation home when a conversation ensued that reminded me yet again of the important role the Boyd School of Law plays in our great state.

My good friend Jason asked my father, Nevada U.S. District Court Judge Larry Hicks, about the significant legal issues that occur in our federal courts. My dad explained examples of his vast workload, including patent-infringement cases involving hundreds of millions of dollars and multidefendant criminal racketeering cases.

Fascinated, Jason posited that my father must receive some impressive law-clerk applications. Dad’s response: “Oh, yes, top of the class—from law schools such as Yale, Columbia and Stanford.”

He then paused for a moment.

“But you know, some of my very best law clerks have come from Boyd, so that’s who I tend to hire—those from our own law school.”

A

s a fifth-generation Nevadan, my roots in the Silver State run deep.

It’s why I chose to do my undergrad studies at UNLV, where I earned a hotel administration degree in the spring of 1998.

It was during my senior year when I began researching law schools and learned that UNLV was on the verge of launching the William S. Boyd School of Law. Talk about good timing. Not only could I remain in my home state and in the area where I was living, but I could be part of the charter class for Nevada’s new, and only, law school. After applying and learning I’d been accepted, I didn’t hesitate to sign on. It’s turned out to be one of the best decisions I have ever made, even though at the time, no one was quite sure what the future held for this newly christened institution.

For starters, the school had not received official accreditation. On top of that, classes were initially held in an old elemen-

tary school, where the bathroom doors still read “girls” and “boys.” The school did, however, have tremendous financial support, an impressive faculty and a determined leader in Dean Richard Morgan.

It quickly became clear that I was on the right path—a path that has led me to where I am today. My stellar professors in Constitutional Law, Criminal Procedure, Trial Advocacy and Evidence sparked my interest in prosecution and trial work. Later, an exciting summer internship in the Clark County District Attorney’s Office powered my desire to serve victims of crime and seek justice on their behalf.

Today, as the elected Washoe County District Attorney overseeing a successful office that strives to uphold and improve the welfare of my beloved hometown, I can say without pause that Boyd was the driving force that paved the way to my professional accomplishments. And I’m not alone.

Time and again, I see the deep and wide influence Boyd has had in shaping Nevada’s current legal community. Just in my office alone, I proudly employ six Boyd graduates who, along with my other deputies, are in court daily diligently serving justice and helping to protect our community. These skilled Boyd alums represent some of my top prosecutors handling everything from difficult murder prosecutions to emotional child abuse cases.

But the DA’s office is hardly the only Washoe County legal entity with Boyd ties.

Our most common professional adversary, the Washoe County Public Defender’s Office, employs nine Boyd graduates. As with the folks in my office, these attorneys exhibit impactful, effective and professional representation of their clients. I’m comfortable in saying that if you ever have the privilege to wander into a courtroom and see these two sides advocating on behalf of their cli-

ents, you would walk away impressed and confident that our system is working.

Of course, Boyd’s reach doesn’t end in the courtrooms of Washoe County. I have the pleasure of serving on several statewide Nevada Supreme Court commissions, whose broad goal is to inspect and improve upon our state’s criminal justice system. I see Boyd playing a significant role here, too.

Fellow alumni up and down the state have been appointed to the commissions because of their own notable accomplishments, and these respected legal minds regularly offer meaningful suggestions and guidance in committee discussions and actions.

Moreover, the Boyd School of Law is often used as a research resource on commission topics. In fact, a report authored by two students for a commission studying statewide criminal procedure represents one of the finest documents produced by the committee to date.

The Boyd impact is also felt outside of the traditional legal community. As president of the Nevada District Attorneys Association, which represents all of the state’s elected district attorneys, I spent more time than usual in Carson City during the most recent legislative session. While there, I was yet again starkly reminded of Boyd’s far-reaching tentacles. From dedicated legislators to accomplished and effective lobbyists, it was gratifying to see my alma mater impressively represented in Carson City and playing a role in shaping Nevada’s future.

Indeed, the successes achieved by the William S. Boyd School of Law and its graduates are undeniable. Although still in its relative infancy, the school has become a pillar in our state, with its graduates permeating the bedrock of our capable legal community (and beyond). And here’s the best news: It’s only going to get better. With the school’s steady climb up the law school rankings and its impressive and innovative programs, Boyd graduates in the coming years are destined to make their mark not just within Nevada’s borders, but also nationally and even internationally.

One thing is for sure: I can’t wait to witness it.

2017 | UNLV Law

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CENTERS & CLINICS

In Memory of Chris Beecroft Jr. LECTURE SERIES HONORS LATE UNLV ALUM, ADR COMMISSIONER

BY CAMILLE CANNON You’d have a difficult time finding anyone in the Las Vegas legal community unfamiliar with the late Chris Beecroft Jr. The 1971 UNLV graduate and guest lecturer had a private practice for 26 years before serving as commissioner of Alternative Dispute Resolution for Clark County District Court, as well as Family Court discovery commissioner. When Beecroft passed away in December 2016, the ADR section of the Nevada State Bar worked quickly to establish the Chris Beecroft Jr. fund, its main purpose being the sponsorship of an eponymous lecture series for the Saltman Center for Conflict Resolution.

This year, the Beecroft Lecture Series welcomes Andrea Schneider, a TED speaker and Marquette University Law School professor who will deliver a presentation on March 18, 2018, titled “Gender and Negotiation: What About the Guys?” The lecture at the Thomas & Mack Moot Courtroom is free and open to the public “It’s not going to be a talk that is only of interest to lawyers,” says professor Jean Sternlight, director of the Saltman Center.

“It’s going to be of interest to anybody interested in negotiation or gender, which really should be everyone on the planet.”

Sternlight, who worked with Beecroft, adds that the Nevada Law Journal will publish an article of Schneider’s remarks, so that her message can reach a wider audience. Spreading the word about Alternate Dispute Resolution is something Beecroft would have appreciated.

“Chris was a quiet, humble man,” says Patrick Chapin, a longtime colleague of Beecroft and former ADR section chairman who worked with the Saltman Center to organize the fund. “He never would have imagined this. His widow and two children are overwhelmed that his name will live on.”

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UNLV Law | 2017

SALTMAN CENTER FOR CONFLICT RESOLUTION

SALTMAN CENTER FOR CONFLICT RESOLUTION

CENTERS & CLINICS

Negotiating a Child’s Future “There’s an opportunity to make a personal connection in mediation. It really humanizes everyone,” she says. “You don’t get those opportunities in the courtroom.”

In Southern Nevada, there are more than 3,000 children in the foster system at any given time, primarily

BY ALEZA FREEMAN because of neglect in the home, says Clark County Family Court Judge Frank Sullivan, who also is a When a family is torn apart because of fears for a UNLV Law adjunct professor. child’s safety and welfare, it’s an agonizing process.

Sullivan estimates that up to 75 percent of kids in The parents may feel dragged through the mud in Nevada’s system end up returning home. He notes court and emotions often run rampant—especially that the ability to mediate these cases “helps out subthose of the child. stantially.”

A cutting-edge mediation program in Nevada is Oriented as a problem-solving conversation in a helping to ease frustration and heartache for everyone neutral setting, juvenile dependency mediation can involved in such cases. occur at various stages. The process brings several UNLV William S. Boyd School of Law faculty parties into the fold: attorneys, social workers, parand supporters are ents, grandparents, foster among those spearparents, prospective adopheading the new Ju- “These cases ... are extremely difficult to tive parents, children— venile Dependency resolve in an adversarial litigation setting. pretty much anyone who Mediation program, No one really ‘wins’ in court. If anything, has something important which helps families the longer a family is left in a state of to say about the case. All negotiate an agreeare able to speak candidly able outcome for uncertainty ... the more the child loses.” about the challenges they child abuse and ne- Lydia Nussbaum, UNLV Law professor and Mediation Clinic director face without concern that it glect cases in Nevada. will later become evidence A partnership between the Nevada Supreme in a court proceeding.

Court, the Division of Child and Family Services and “It puts everyone on a level playing field,” says the Second Judicial District Court, the mediation Nussbaum, who also serves as associate director of the program provides a forum outside the courtroom Saltman Center. “The participants are not opponents to peacefully resolve issues surrounding a child’s … but instead are focused on what kind of future arremoval from home or the termination of parental rangement will be in the child’s best interest.” rights, also known as the “civil death penalty.”

Nussbaum adds that these cases also provide valuSuccessfully piloted in Washoe County, the program able learning opportunities for UNLV Law students, has now spread to all 11 of Nevada’s judicial districts. who sometimes sit in on mediations. “Not only do they “These cases … are extremely difficult to resolve in an get to see how the process adapts and adjusts to differadversarial litigation setting,” says Lydia Nussbaum, a ent kinds of legal disputes, but they also see different UNLV Law associate professor who is also director of parties in action,” she says. the law school’s Mediation Clinic and a program meUltimately, the primary objective of the Juvenile diator in Southern Nevada. “No one really ‘wins’ in Dependency Mediation program is to do right by the court. If anything, the longer the family is left in a state children. of legal uncertainty … the more the child loses.”

“Whether it’s going back to be with their parents or Margaret Crowley, the statewide program director being adopted, our goal with every child-welfare case for the Juvenile Dependency Mediation program and a is to try to give these children a safe, permanent and board member for the law school’s Saltman Center for nurturing home in a timely manner,” Sullivan says.

Conflict Resolution, shares a similar opinion. Crowley “Mediation is the key for family engagement,” he says the air of civility that’s usually associated with adds. “Instead of being told what to do, the family is mediation is a big plus when juveniles are involved. part of the solution.”

JUVENILE DEPENDENCY MEDIATION PROGRAM AIMS TO KEEP KIDS, FAMILIES OUT OF THE COURTROOM

2017 | UNLV Law

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CENTERS & CLINICS

You Can Bet on It A U.S. SUPREME COURT DECISION THAT WOULD GRANT NEW JERSEY THE RIGHT TO OFFER SPORTS WAGERING WOULD BE A NET POSITIVE FOR NEVADA— AS WELL AS BOYD’S GAMING LAW PROGRAM

BY PATRICK EVERSON Nevada has long been the standard bearer for sports betting in the United States. In fact, it’s the only state in the union in which single-game sports betting is legal. But other states—particularly New Jersey—have recently expressed a serious desire to get in on the action.

Given the amount of revenue involved, it’s no surprise that state agencies have been pushing the federal government—so far, to no avail—to allow sports betting to leak beyond Nevada’s borders. What is a surprise? That the U.S. Supreme Court has decided to jump into the game by agreeing to hear an appeal from the state of New Jersey, whose request to overturn the federal sports-betting ban was denied in August 2016 by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.

“I think it’s going to be interesting, because I wasn’t expecting the case would be taken, nor were a lot of people expecting it,” says Jennifer Roberts, adjunct professor at the UNLV William S. Boyd School of Law. Roberts has practiced gaming law for 14 years and also serves as the associate director of the International Center for Gaming Regulation, housed on the UNLV campus. So she has a keen interest in how New Jersey’s case is received by the nation’s top court, which will hear arguments in the coming months and likely render a decision by spring 2018.

If the High Court rules in New Jersey’s favor, Nevada for the first time would have domestic competition in the legalized sports betting market. A bad thing for the Silver State? Not according to Roberts, who believes New Jersey (and other states) would come knocking on the doors of Nevada casinos asking for operations help.

“I’d expect sportsbook operators here would help run or operate or at a minimum advise New Jersey operators,” Roberts says. “You’re probably going to have a lot of operators here [also doing business] in New Jersey.”

That could include companies such as MGM Resorts International or, as Roberts noted, an independent operator such as William Hill US. David G. Schwartz, longtime director of UNLV’s Center for Gaming Research, agrees that a New Jersey victory in the Supreme Court would be a net positive for Nevada companies. And that’s even if Nevada’s betting handle took a bit of a hit.

“There’s a possibility that Las Vegas will lose some appeal as a des8

UNLV Law | 2017

GAMING LAW

“Regulated sports betting is a much better system than illegal sports wagering. It’s better for the customers, providing protection when they make a wager, while also preventing criminal elements. And it addresses problem gambling.

There are a lot of built-in protections you don’t have in unregulated gambling.”

tination for big sports events that offer other forms of casilike the Super Bowl and no gambling might look to get March Madness, but a broadon board, as well. er spread of sports betting will “Regulated sports betting is likely increase the total cusa much better system than iltomer pool,” Schwartz says. legal sports wagering,” Roberts “In addition, Nevada-based says. “It’s better for the customcompanies will be well-placed ers, providing protection when to start offering sports betting they make a wager, while also in states like New Jersey.” preventing criminal elements.

Not surprisingly, there And it addresses problem gamare entities lined up on both Jennifer Roberts bling. There are a lot of built-in sides of this issue. Among the Adjunct professor, UNLV William S. Boyd School of Law protections you don’t have in more dominant forces rootunregulated gambling.” ing against the expansion of Widespread legalized sports sports betting are major sports organizations such as wagering would also positively impact UNLV Law by the National Football League and the National Colleadding to the relevance of the school’s pioneering Masgiate Athletic Association. But the question becomes: ter of Laws (LL.M.) program in Gaming Law and ReguHow much sway should such organizations have in lation—the only LL.M. program of its kind, which this this debate? year graduated its second class. Because Boyd offers “The arguments are primarily based upon a state’smore gaming courses than any other law school in the rights issue—whether the federal government can regcountry, graduates of and students in the Gaming Law ulate that New Jersey have a criminal law prohibiting program gain unique expertise. And that expertise will sports wagering,” Roberts says. “What I see as favorbe in greater demand if legalized sports betting spreads, able is that sports betting is a traditional state’s-rights which is why Gaming Law students are closely followissue, because gambling is reserved to the states under ing the New Jersey case. the 10th Amendment.”

“Sports betting is obviously a big part of the gaming Which is why a Supreme Court victory for New Jereconomy in Nevada,” says Brian Wall, UNLV Law’s disey would essentially be a Supreme Court victory for rector of admissions and financial aid. “But a number every state. of our students are working in New Jersey, [so they] “I think it is very likely,” Schwartz says when asked would obviously benefit greatly, and we have stuif other states would fall in line behind New Jersey and dents in other states that don’t have legalized gambling legalize sports betting if given the federal green light. where that opportunity could open.

“There is not a state in the union that doesn’t need more “Our students are prepared for whatever kind of revenue, and sports betting will be seen as a way to raise landscape there is, depending on what the changes to more revenue without raising taxes. sports betting are.”

“Keep in mind, though, that in Nevada, sports betting Which brings things full circle back to the quesis a relatively small market—about 2 percent of the totion of the day: Will the Supreme Court defer to state’s tal gaming win, or $200 million a year. The tax receipts rights, side with New Jersey and provide the impetus are in the neighborhood of $14 million. Needless to say, to broaden sports betting in America? “It rests upon sports betting isn’t going to be balancing the budget those unique constitutional issues,” Roberts says. “I’m anywhere anytime soon.” not an expert in those areas, so what will happen, I Indeed, but the bigger victory could be breaking up couldn’t speculate.” sports betting’s black market. Total handle at Nevada She may not care to offer a prediction, but Roberts sportsbooks in 2016 was a record $4.5 billion. However, isn’t afraid to say what side she’s cheering for: New Jeraccording to the American Gaming Association, illegal sey’s. Because if sports betting does expand beyond Nesports betting in the U.S. massively dwarfs that number, vada, it might then force Congress to look into repealing with estimates ranging from $150 billion to as much as the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act of $400 billion annually.

1992 [PAPSA], a mandate that is ostensibly propping up Permitting a legal alternative outside of Nevada, sports betting’s black market.

Roberts says, is a reasonable and necessary solution.

“I think PASPA is an antiquated, unnecessary fedShe says jurisdictions that already have regulated eral law,” Roberts says. “You’re losing out when sports gaming would be the most likely to move forward with betting is already happening [illegally]—you’re losing sports betting, including such states as Mississippi, out on revenue and employment, and having those Pennsylvania and Michigan. Native American tribes regulatory protections.”

CENTERS & CLINICS

GAMING LAW ADVISORY BOARD Mike Alonso, Lewis Roca Rothgerber Christie; Patricia Becker, Patricia Becker and Associates; Bo Bernhard, UNLV International Gaming Institute; Peter Bernhard, Kaempfer Crowell; Michael Brunet, Palms Resort and Casino; A.G. Burnett, Nevada Gaming Control Board; Anthony Cabot, Lewis Roca Rothgerber Christie; Jacob Coin, San Manuel Band of Mission Indians; Bill Curran, Ballard Spahr; Lou Dorn, SLS Hotels; Mark Dunn, Aristocrat Technolgies; Katie Fellows, Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Las Vegas; Geoff Freeman, American Gaming Association; Phyllis Gilland, American Casino & Entertainment Properties; Gregory Giordano, McDonald Carano; A.J. “Bud” Hicks, McDonald Carano; Tom Jingoli, Konami Gaming; Terry Johnson, Nevada Gaming Control Board; Jan Jones Blackhurst, Caesars Entertainment; Jacqui Krum, Wynn Resorts; Yvette Landau, W.A. Richardson Builders; Brian Larson, Boyd Gaming; Katie Lever, Baha Mar; Mark Lipparelli, Golden Entertainment, Inc. and Gioco Ventures; John McManus, MGM Resorts International; Kevin Mullally, Gaming Labs International; Maren Parry, Ballard Spahr; Anthony Pearl (Chair), The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas; Michael Prescott, IGT; Jennifer Roberts, International Center for Gaming Regulation; Jeffrey Rodefer; Scott Scherer, Holland & Hart; Frank Schreck, Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck; Jeffrey Silver, Dickinson Wright; Kim Sinatra, Wynn Resorts; Mike Sloan, Fertitta Entertainment; Keith Smith, Boyd Gaming; Randolph Townsend, Nevada Gaming Comission; Ellen Whittemore, Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck; Andre Wilsenach, International Center for Gaming Regulation 2017 | UNLV Law

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GAMING LAW

CENTERS & CLINICS

Laying Down the Law STUDENTS CONTRIBUTE TO PIONEERING LEGISLATION THAT PAVES THE WAY FOR ESPORTS BETTING IN NEVADA

BY PATRICK EVERSON Sports betting is growing at a tremendous rate in Nevada, as evidenced by a more than 50 percent increase in the annual amount of money wagered statewide over the past five years, from $2.9 billion in 2011 to a record $4.5 billion wagered at Silver State sportsbooks in 2016. Now, thanks to students at the UNLV William S. Boyd School of Law, another betting avenue has opened in a very forward-looking market with a young demographic: esports.

Students in UNLV Law’s Gaming Law Policy class were instrumental in ushering Nevada Senate Bill 240 through the 2017 Legislature, as it passed both the Senate and the Assembly, and was signed into law by Governor Brian Sandoval on May 27. The legislation, which took effect July 1, provides sportsbook operators with the necessary clarification to offer esports wagering—for instance, videogame competitions—in a pari-mutuel format, mirroring the way horse racing is handled.

“Internationally, you could bet on these [esports] events for a couple of years now.

But here in Nevada, our laws weren’t clear,” says student Michael Linton, who is in his final year at UNLV and also is editor-inchief of this year’s Gaming Law Journal.

Along with several of his peers, Linton lobbied in support of SB240 in front of various legislative committees and affected stakeholders “The goal [with SB240] was to push something out there within the legislative structure to make it easier for operators to embrace this new type of betting. This law laid out a road map to providing these types of wagers.”

To meet the deadline for consideration by the 2017 Legislature, the bill required predrafting, which was done—in concert with Nevada gaming regulators and the Attorney General’s office—by UNLV Law Adjunct Professor Greg Gemignani, who instructs the Gaming Law Policy class.

In allowing esports into the market, the bill not only clarified how wagers could be accepted, but also put operators in a better 10

UNLV Law | 2017

position to offer esports, since pari-mutuel wagering gives the sportsbook a guaranteed percentage cut of every bet, win or lose. Of the remaining total pool, all winning bettors get a share corresponding with the amount wagered and the final odds on said wager.

The job of Gemignani’s students was to understand and clarify existing pari-mutuel betting laws contained within Nevada Revised Statute 464.

“NRS 464 left out pari-mutuel wagering on other events,” says Gemignani, a practicing gaming law attorney for the past 18 years.

“The [Nevada] Gaming Control Board was reluctant to approve pari-mutuel systems and wagering on other events [like esports] because it wasn’t explicit in the statute.”

In addition to understanding the existing law and the impact the new bill would have on that law, students helped refine and present SB240 to the Gaming Control Board, the Nevada Gaming Commission, and the Senate and Assembly Judiciary Committees. All of the student testimony took place during hearings in Las Vegas or via video conference with legislators in Carson City.

The esports bill is just the latest example of how Boyd’s Gaming Law Policy class has

contributed to gaming law in Nevada. In prior sessions, Gemignani says his students “were instrumental in updating Nevada’s charitable lottery statute, harmonizing NRS 463 and NRS 465 with regard to interstate online gaming, and creating a pathway for a preliminary finding of suitability for those contemplating gaming transactions.”

These policy successes have given students valuable hands-on experience.

“Honestly, this class has presented some of the most practical, useful legislation,” Linton says. “Boyd graduates will have more information about and knowledge of gaming law than any other law school graduate.”

Both Gemignani and Linton credited the success of SB240, as well as legislation from previous classes, to renowned gaming attorney Bob Faiss, who died in 2014.

“The course itself was started by Bob as a way of training the next generation of gaming lawyers,” Gemignani says. “You can do a lot of good for your client if you’re active in developing statutes and regulations. Bob was a master of that. In a lot of law schools, that’s sort of overlooked. He really thought bill-drafting and lobbying were skills a gaming lawyer probably should have.”

HEALTH LAW

CENTERS & CLINICS

A Matter of Life and Death BOYD ALUM—WHO ALSO HAPPENS TO BE A NEUROLOGIST—ASSISTS IN THE PASSAGE OF GROUNDBREAKING BRAIN-DEATH LAW

BY ALEZA FREEMAN There’s a pioneering new Nevada health law that aims to remove any ambiguity associated with making excruciating endof-life decisions—a law that was crafted and passed with a little help from a recent Boyd School of Law graduate.

Assembly Bill 424 provides uniform legal guidelines for the determination of brain death, using evidence-based standards set by the Academy of Neurology.

Although brain death has been legally recognized in Nevada since 1979, there has long been controversy regarding when a patient is actually brain dead. This first-ofits-kind law, which was passed unanimously by the state Senate on May 23, addresses that controversy by authorizing physicians to declare when someone is brain dead, without consent of family or an authorized representative.

“It’s a very good bill [about] a major decision,” says Dr. Paul Janda, a neurologist and program director of the Neurology Residency Program at Valley Hospital Medical Center.

Janda certainly has the credentials to offer such an opinion. After all, in addition to earning his medical degree from Touro University in California, Janda graduated from the UNLV William S. Boyd School of Law in 2016, making him the first and only boardcertified neurologist-lawyer in Nevada.

In addition to running his own practice, Janda serves as the director at the primary stroke centers of

Reno hospital in May 2015. Soon after, Hailu’s father sought and received a restraining order to keep his daughter on life support.

When the case went before the Nevada Supreme Court, justices unanimously agreed that the hospital’s brain death standards might not satisfy state law. So, Hailu was kept on life support until January 2016, when she tragically died prior to further legal proceedings.

Although AB 424 faced little opposition, Dr. Paul Janda, neurologist and 2016 Boyd graduate.

Janda did hear two hospitals in the Valley Health some concerns about the excluSystem. At the behest of both the sion of family from the end-of-life Valley Health System chief mediprocess. He counters that in his cal officer and ethics nurse, Janda experience with brain death, as testified on two separate occasions defined by the new law, “no one before the Nevada Assembly and has ever woken up from it or had Senate in support of Assembly Bill any sort of meaningful recovery.”

424. He also aided in the drafting At least one of Janda’s former process by reviewing and making Boyd professors isn’t surprised edits to the bill, for which he says he had a hand in the creation and his UNLV Law education served implementation of such a vital and him well. groundbreaking piece of medical “[The faculty] do a great job of legislation. showing us legal writing and the “I remember Paul well from construction of laws,” says Janda, my evening Employment Diswho currently serves on UNLV’s crimination class,” says Professor Health Law Advisory Board.

Ann McGinley. “After a full day of “That really did help me.” working in his medical practice, AB 424 was introduced folhe arrived prepared to discuss the lowing the divisive case of Las materials that I had assigned. “It Vegas resident Aden Hailu. A is so gratifying to see [Janda] use month after complications from both his law and medical degrees exploratory surgery, the 20-yearin tandem and work for the betterold was declared brain dead at a ment of the people of Nevada.”

HEALTH LAW ADVISORY BOARD

Connie Akridge, JD, MBA, Holland & Hart, Las Vegas Office; Barbara Atkinson, MD, UNLV School of Medicine; Lawrence Barnard, MBA, Dignity Health – St. Rose Dominican, San Martin Campus; Annette Bradley, JD, Southern Nevada Health District; Michelle Chino, PhD, Department of Environmental and Occupational Health, UNLV School of Community Health Sciences; Peter Christiansen, JD, Christiansen Law Offices; Renee Coffman, PhD, RPh, Roseman University of Health Sciences; Ellen Cosgrove, MD, FACP, UNLV School of Medicine; Georgia Dounis, DDS, MS, Interdisciplinary Center on Aging Research & Education, UNLV School of Dental Medicine; Janet Dufek, MS, PhD, UNLV Department of Kinesiology and Nutrition Sciences; Carole Fisher, Nathan Adelson Hospice; Samantha Fredrickson, JD, Planned Parenthood of Southern Nevada; Paul Janda, DO, JD, Valley Hospital Medical Center Neurology Residency Program; Sam Kaufman, MS, Desert Springs Hospital; Deborah Kuhls, MD, FACS, FCCM, Professor of Surgery, and Principal Academic Officer, Las Vegas Campus, University of Nevada School of Medicine; John O’Reilly, JD, MBA, O’Reilly Law Group; chair, University Medical Center Governing Board; Cheryl Perna, MSN, RN, UNLV School of Nursing; Melissa Piasecki, MD, University of Nevada School of Medicine; Susan Pitz, JD, MBA, University Medical Center; Michael Saltman, JD, The Vista Group; Lynn Stange, RN, BSN, MA, CHC, Nathan Adelson Hospice; Vincent Thomas, MD, MHA, FHRS, Children’s Hospital and Medical Center - Omaha, Neb.; John Valery White, JD, William S. Boyd School of Law; Richard Whitley, MS, Nevada Department of Health and Human Services; Dylan Wint, MD, Cleveland Clinic Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health 2017 | UNLV Law

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A GLIMPSE INTO BOYD’S GOOD WORKS IN THE COMMUNITY

GIVING BACK

PUBLIC INTEREST ADVISORY BOARD Cynthia Alexander (Chair), Dickinson Wright; The Honorable Nancy Allf, Eighth Judicial District Court; Kristine Bergstrom, Nevada Legal Services; Barbara Buckley, Legal Aid Center of Southern Nevada; Bill Curran, Ballard & Spahr; The Honorable Michael Douglas, Supreme Court of Nevada; James Conway, Washoe Legal Services; Nikki Harris, William S. Boyd School of Law; AnnaMarie Johnson, Nevada Legal Services; The Honorable Joanna Kishner, Eighth Judicial District Court; Patricia Lee, Hutcheson & Steffen; Noah Malgeri, Legal Aid Center of Southern Nevada; Professor Lydia Nussbaum, William S. Boyd School of Law; Shannon Phenix, Office of the Clark County Public Defender; Shaina Plaksin, Clerk to Judge Gloria Navarro; Dan Polsenberg, Lewis Roca Rothgerber Christie; Carmela Reed, Clerk to Judge Dianne Steel; Deacon Thomas Roberts, Catholic Charities of Southern Nevada; Samatha Scofield, William S. Boyd School of Law, Public Interest Law Association; Dean Christine Smith, William S. Boyd School of Law; The Honorable Gloria Sturman, Eighth Judicial District Court; Elana Turner Graham, Southern Nevada Senior Law Program; Brittnie Watkins, Pisanelli Bice 12

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A Legacy Lives On BOYD STUDENT AWARDED INAUGURAL FELLOWSHIP CREATED IN HONOR OF RESPECTED LAS VEGAS ATTORNEY WHO DEDICATED HER CAREER TO PRO BONO WORK

BY CAMILLE CANNON When attorney Melanie Kushnir passed away in a hiking accident in May 2016, many of her colleagues in the Las Vegas legal community quickly made a point to take on pro bono cases in her honor. It was a fitting tribute, in that Kushnir had built a career and legacy on pro bono legal service, even serving as director of the Legal Aid Center of Southern Nevada’s Pro Bono Project for five years until her tragic passing.

“She dedicated herself to being an inspiration to everyone in this community: attorneys, law students, leaders of the bar and judiciary,” says Christine Smith, associate dean for public service, compliance and administration at the UNLV William S. Boyd School of Law. “Her mission was to inspire them to volunteer their time to those in need. She was an amazing person.”

Kushnir’s devotion to public interest law and community service now lives on through the Melanie Kushnir Access to Justice Fellowship, offered through the Legal Aid Center of Southern Nevada.

The inaugural fellowship recipient is Matthew Cook, a fourthyear JD/LL.M. student at UNLV Law and Public Interest Fellow.

To be considered for the fellowship, applicants were required to submit a proposal that focused on ways to “improve access to justice in civil law in Southern Nevada or increase pro bono participation in

Melanie Kushnir

Matthew Cook

the valley.” Cook was selected after developing a plan to increase awareness and clientele for the Legal Aid Center by managing a Google AdWords online marketing campaign. Among the goals of Cook’s campaign was to make it easier for those who search for legal services through Google to discover and utilize the Legal Aid Center’s website.

Cook wowed the selection committee with his proposal, interview, and community service background, which includes running a successful Google AdWords campaign for Opportunity Village, as well as three semesters as a family justice law clerk with the Legal Aid Center, volunteering with Partners in Pro Bono, and law courses taught at The Shade Tree women’s shelter. By earning the fellowship, Cook was awarded a $10,000 stipend to work full time on his proposal at the Legal Aid Center this past summer.

“I was really excited to get involved and help out the community,” Cook says.

Cook says that the ads he built

have reached more than 200,000 devices (mobile phones, tablets, computers, etc.) in Nevada, and resulted in more than 12,000 online user engagements.

Cook’s fellowship ended in August, but prior to departing, he says he trained Legal Aid Center employees how to manage the marketing campaign to maintain its success. As an additional component to the fellowship, Cook is receiving ongoing mentorship from Clark County District Court Judge Frank Sullivan—a mentorship that Cook says has helped him foster connections in gaming law, the area in which he intends to pursue a career.

Cook—who also serves as president of OPLS (Organization of Part-Time and Nontraditional Law Students) and social media coordinator for Hispanic student organization La Voz—is expected to graduate in spring 2018. After that? “I’d love to work on business litigation, breach-of-contract issues, gaming law and gaming law licensing. And I want to continue doing pro bono work, especially with family cases.”

INTERESTING INSIGHTS INTO THE BOYD COMMUNITY

WHO KNEW?

Conflict Resolution—as well as the expertise of its director, Professor Jean Sternlight, and other faculty—students who opt for the Dispute Resolution concentration will take both doctrinal and experiential courses designed to develop their skills in advocacy and negotiation.

“Fewer and fewer disputes are settled by litigation, and our students need exposure and training in all aspects of conflict settlement,” Price says. “Some of that introduction will take place in traditional law school classes, while other training is best provided through skills-based courses.”

Options Abound FOUR NEW ELECTIVE CONCENTRATIONS AIM TO GIVE BOYD STUDENTS AN EDGE As the Las Vegas Valley continues to grow, the UNLV William S. Boyd School of Law has followed suit, this year adding four subject-area concentrations designed for students who wish to specialize their law school studies.

Given the strength of the faculty involved with these four new concentrations—Health Law, Dispute Resolution, Workplace Law, and Intellectual Property Law—Boyd students now can further enhance their knowledge in these increasingly vital areas of law.

It’s a win-win-win for UNLV Law, its students, and the community.

“Students who elect to follow a concentration will work with leading scholars and distinguished practitioners,” says Jeanne Price, Boyd’s associate dean for academic affairs. “Attorneys and other community leaders will learn more about Boyd students—and, we hope, decide to hire them.”

Photo: Aaron Mayes/UNLV Photo Services

HEALTH LAW Already a booming (and topical) industry for lawyers nationwide, the recent opening of the UNLV School of Medicine means even more opportunity for Boyd graduates. “The concentration in health law was the first that we created, and the advent of UNLV’s medical school made it all the more important,” Price says.

An academic partnership between UNLV Law and the School of Community Health Sciences, the Health Law Program offers an innovative concentration for law students who wish to focus their elective studies in this discipline. Led by Professors Max Gakh, Dr. David Orentlicher, and Dr. Stacey Tovino, the concentration includes courses such as Health Care Access Quality and Liability, Bioethics and the Law, Disability Law, HIPAA Privacy, and Mental Health Law. DISPUTE RESOLUTION Preparing students to settle conflicts through negotiation, mediation and other alternatives to litigation has become even more important in today’s economy.

Building on the strength of Boyd’s nationally recognized Saltman Center for

WORKPLACE LAW Labor and employment issues can arise in almost every lawyer’s practice. Whether negotiating employment agreements, reviewing allegations of employment discrimination or managing the relationships between union and management, attorneys who specialize in workplace law need a strong foundation in labor and employment law, and the skills to put that substantive knowledge to good use.

Led by Professors Ann McGinley and Ruben Garcia, the Workplace Law concentration prepares students to practice in a highly regulated and complex area governed by both federal and state law.

Courses include Disability Law, Employment Discrimination, Employment Law and Labor Law. Also, externships in government settings are open to students.

INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY With its vibrant entertainment industry and innovative tech community, Las Vegas provides a wealth of opportunities for lawyers who choose to focus on intellectual property.

Reacting to and anticipating changes in technology, intellectual property lawyers need a variety of knowledge and skills to help clients navigate the ever-changing legal environment in this particular discipline.

Professors Mary LaFrance and Marketa Trimble developed the Intellectual Property Law concentration and work closely with students in exploring copyright, patent, trademark, unfair competition, and other areas of intellectual property law.

They also work with the community to support entrepreneurs.

Boyd students also benefit from the strength of the local intellectual property bar, with recognized local practitioners interacting with students through guest lectures and at conferences and other events.

2017 | UNLV Law

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WHO KNEW?

Rising Up UNLV LAW’S AMERICAN CONSTITUTION SOCIETY CHAPTER GAINS NATIONAL RECOGNITION

BY CAMILLE CANNON The UNLV William S. Boyd School of Law offers a thriving, active campus with more than 25 student-run organizations. One of those clubs—the American Constitution Society—underwent a renaissance last year that led to a prestigious honor.

With nearly 200 student chapters at law schools nationwide, the American Constitution Society (ACS) is a progressive organization that exists to foster debate and discussion of legal issues such as equality, individual rights, and accessible justice.

UNLV is home to one of those chapters, but past years proved to be somewhat quiet for the group—so quiet that few events were staged.

Then along came Racheal Ross, the 20162017 president of UNLV’s ACS chapter. Under her guidance, the organization executed about one event per month, and as a result was named Rising Chapter of the Year by the ACS national board.

“I worked closely with the assistant director of student chapters,” says Ross, who was honored as 2017 Next Generation Leader and will serve as the chapter’s 2017-2018 Internal Affairs director.

Ross says she believes UNLV Law was recognized by the national ACS organization for a specific event the chapter hosted the day after the 2016 election: a projection of what a Trump administration Supreme Court would look like, with a lecture presented by esteemed constitutional law scholar Erwin Chemerinsky, who is now dean of the University of California, Berkeley School of Law. Looking ahead, incoming president Sara Schreiber, a second-year UNLV Law student, says the chapter aims to build upon last year’s efforts. The goal is not only to entice more students to become a part of the organization, but also to continue to enhance its reputation in the community— both on campus and off.

“Our focus is on growing our membership with students, building our event schedule, 14

UNLV Law | 2017

Sara Schreiber, second-year Boyd student and current president of UNLV Law’s chapter of the American Constitution Society.

and connecting with local professionals,” Schreiber says.

But Schreiber is not stopping there, as she offers a glimpse at how the reigning

Rising Chapter winner intends to continue its ascent: “Ultimately, we’re preparing ourselves for a potential national ACS event to be hosted at UNLV.”

WHO KNEW?

NEVADA LAW JOURNAL PLANNING WHITE PAPER ON BURGEONING MARIJUANA INDUSTRY

Brendan McLeod, second-year Boyd student and current president of UNLV Law’s chapter of the Federalist Society.

Open for Discussion FEDERALIST SOCIETY TO CONTINUE TO ENCOURAGE SPIRITED DEBATE DURING CAMPUS EVENTS IN 2017-18

BY CAMILLE CANNON Everyone recognizes the grueling nature of law school—no matter who you are or where you come from, it’s a long, difficult road to earning that coveted JD degree. But it’s not just the coursework that’s challenging.

“Law school can be intimidating,” says Brendan McLeod, a second-year student at the UNLV William S. Boyd School of Law. “If you have an opinion that’s counter to what everyone else believes, it’s sometimes hard to express that in a classroom.”

It’s a big reason why McLeod decided to join UNLV’s chapter of the Federalist Society, for which he’s the current president.

Adhering to the Federalist Society’s motto of “Debate. Discuss. Decide,” UNLV is one of about 200 law school chapters, whose more than 10,000 members are committed to providing a forum for conservative and libertarian viewpoints.

The student-run organization expects

to be quite active during the upcoming academic year. In fact, the chapter has already locked in an impressive roster of speakers, including Nevada Solicitor General Lawrence VanDyke, Georgetown University professor Randy Barnett, and South Texas College of Law associate professor and conservative Twitter commentator Joshua Blackman. Also on the docket are political commentator Deroy Murdock, as well as Ilya Shapiro, a senior fellow in constitutional studies at the Cato Institute.

“We want to bring in one speaker per month to provide open discourse for the law school,” McLeod says.

Additionally, McLeod says the Federalist Society will team up with other campus groups, such as the American Constitution Society, to co-sponsor speaking events that bring in a variety of perspectives. The chapter is also planning at least one community service event per semester and periodic networking sessions with the Las Vegas Lawyers chapter of the Federalist Society.

“We don’t endorse any specific candidate or policy,” McLeod says. “Our hope is for people to come have an open debate and discourse, and be able to decide for themselves.”

This year’s white paper is going green.

The comprehensive report published by the Nevada Law Journal, will address some of the legal implications of the burgeoning marijuana industry. With the legalization of recreational use in Nevada comes marijuana businesses requiring legal counsel. Additionally, many Nevada attorneys are invested in the marijuana industry, while some may be seeking medical cannabis for health conditions.

Making the issue even more convoluted is the fact that, while Nevada voters may have given the thumbs up to pot, the federal government has not.

“This is something that we really need to look into, to get into the nitty gritty and figure out what the heck to do,” says Stephanie Glantz, a third-year student at the UNLV William S. Boyd School of Law and editor-in-chief for Volume 18 of the Nevada Law Journal. “The reality is, no one really knows what to do. Other states [that have legalized marijuana] don’t know either. There are these rules of ethical conduct saying attorneys can’t advise clients to do illegal activities … and [marijuana] is still illegal under federal law.”

In a letter sent to Nevada Supreme Court Chief Justice Michael A. Cherry, Glantz explains: “Even with so many Nevadans already involved in the marijuana industry, there is little guidance on important questions pertaining to the legality, professionalism and ethics of partnering in, and counseling clients engaged in, this emerging industry.

“This is a great opportunity for the William S. Boyd School of Law to provide guidance to the legal profession on a local and national scale.”

Still in the early stages, this year’s white paper will take several months to complete, with co-authors Alysa Grimes, Beatriz Aguirre, and Brent Resh conducting hundreds of hours of in-depth research while also seeking input from Cherry and other Nevada Supreme Court justices.

This is just the third white paper to be produced by the Nevada Law Journal, but past submissions have proven important to the legal community. In fact, a previous white paper on educational savings accounts was cited by the state’s highest court in one of its decisions.

“The white paper is so important to the community,” Glantz says. “The hope is that by publishing it, people will start talking, and it can create a productive conversation that will, in turn, make the legal environment better.”

—Aleza Freeman 2017 | UNLV Law

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We Are Boyd THEY ARRIVE EAGER TO LEARN ABOUT THE LAW AND LEAVE DETERMINED TO POSITIVELY IMPACT THE LEGAL PROFESSION. HERE’S THE STORY OF FOUR STUDENTS’ JOURNEY TO—AND THROUGH— UNLV LAW. BY STEVE BORNFELD

L

aw is the order of the day—every day, for 19 years now—inside these halls. And in a city whose rich history is laced with colorful figures from organized crime—and even features a “mob museum” to chronicle it—you’ve got to savor the exquisite irony of the mere exis-

tence of the UNLV William S. Boyd School of Law. Beyond that irony, though, is a respected training ground for

guardians of our legal system, where nearly 400 full- and part-time students are currently learning both the intricacies and ethics of the law through an extensive curriculum. It’s a curriculum that encourages students to apply their burgeoning skills to benefit the community, and helps place them in judicial clerkships and in positions with prestigious law firms.

Among the army of young attorneys the school is preparing to send out into the wide world of law, here are four who are eagerly on the march.

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UNLV Law | 2017

Left to right: Eric Duhon, Beatriz Aguirre, Caleb Green, and Sara Schreiber (Photographs by R. Marsh Starks/UNLV Photo Services)

CALEB GREEN Second-year law student Hometown: Lansing, Michigan Organization affiliations: President of the Black Law Student Association; vice president of the Intellectual Property Law Society; community service chair for the Immigration Law Society; member of the UNLV Multicultural Center Student Advisory Council.

Extracurricular activities: Volunteer at Immanuel’s Temple Systems of Church; application/ software development; hiking, kayaking, golfing and playing basketball.

My favorite class at UNLV Law was … Lawyering Process II, particularly the oral argument component. Throughout the semester, I had the opportunity to refine my oral arguing skills with my fellow law school peers. This not only polished my presentation and delivery of my argument, but also led to some memorable experiences with friends I’ve made at Boyd.

My career goals are … to become a practicing intellectual property lawyer, specializing in patent and trademark prosecution. I would also like to get some experience in cyber-security legal matters. I earned my bachelor’s degree in computer science and worked in the information technology profession prior to starting law school. Additionally, the Community Service program at Boyd exposed me to immigration law during my first year, and from the start I knew this was the area of law I wanted to commit myself to serving pro bono.

Let’s give it up for Caleb Green’s uncle. “It all started with him,” says the student who is planning for a career in intellectual property law. “He was a general counsel attorney for John Deere in Midland, Michigan. He helped secure the patent for John Deere, that they are the only ones that can have green and yellow lawnmowers and other landscaping devices. I would go over to his house every Thanksgiving, and he would tell me the story like it’s the first time. He really encouraged me to get a technical degree.”

And so Green did, building on his interest in technology and computers, before deciding to “synthesize” everything with a law degree. “I wanted to find a way to be able to use both [technology and computers], and intellectual property seemed to be the perfect match.”

Choosing UNLV Law as that matchmaker over other law schools he was considering in California has paid dividends for Green, who cites his Lawyering Process II class as particularly beneficial because it made him think twice about his strengths. Initially, he thought he only desired to practice transactional law.

“It really showed me that I had a gift, if I wanted to, for arguing in court,” Green says.

“We had to not only write a brief of a factpattern legal issue, but we also had to do an oral argument in front of a panel of judges where they would ask you questions, interrupt you and force you to think on the spot.

I got some good feedback from my professor and my peers. I felt like I was not only refin18

UNLV Law | 2017

ing my legal skills, but also exploring and identifying other skills I’m good at.”

Understatement would also seem to be one of Green’s traits when he claims that “I don’t like to be idle.” Consider his extracurricular affiliations: the Black Law Student Association, the Intellectual Property Law Society, the Immigration Law Society and the UNLV Multicultural Center Student Advisory Council—and that’s just a partial list. “I’m always wanting to be productive, so finding opportunities that can help me achieve my goals but also keep me busy, that’s how I like to do it,” Green says.

“One of my mentors says you have to speak truth to power from a position of power to affect change, so being a voice for those who are underrepresented is very important. The academic side is important, but there is also a service side that we as attorneys and aspiring attorneys have to value. Less than 1 percent of Americans ever become attorneys.

We are a small community, but we have a big burden of responsibility to make sure we’re using our legal skills not just for personal gain but to better the community as well.”

SARA SCHREIBER Second-year law student Hometown: Las Vegas Organization affiliations: President of the American Constitution Society for Law and Policy, UNLV Chapter; junior staff member with the Nevada Law Journal.

Extracurricular activities: Cooking and gardening.

My favorite UNLV Law experience has been … my summer internship at the Regional Justice Center, because I had the opportunity to observe many of the different courts while also being able to brief a variety of criminal and civil matters.

My career goals are … I’m leaning toward criminal law, however I’m open to new opportunities as I continue to progress through law school.

Life experience came first. Then the law.

That turned out to be the perfect chronology for this one-time fingerprint technician for the Henderson Police Department.

“Having that extra job experience and working here in Las Vegas really emphasized that becoming an attorney was what I wanted to do,” Schreiber says. “One of the big motivations was interacting with the court system—seeing attorneys practice, helping them make cases—and interacting with my co-workers. Then I realized the option [for law school] was out there and I could do that.”

Beyond being a hometown choice, UNLV Law appealed to Schreiber in other ways as she honed in on an anticipated legal career.

“The big thing for me was how involved Boyd was in the local community,” says Schreiber, who has done a judicial internship and taught community service classes, which help educate the public on legal issues via the school’s partnership with the Legal Aid Center of Southern Nevada.

“[Criminal law] was initially what I wanted to follow, and it’s still what I want to go into.

But seeing the wide range of classes we take, I’m open to different opportunities and ideas.”

Sara Schreiber

“When I first went to law school, it was with the intention of going into government affairs, but after a few civil procedure classes, I knew I wanted to be a litigator.”

Beatriz Aguirre

“Less than 1 percent of Americans become attorneys. We are a small community, but we have a big burden of responsibility to use our legal skills not just for personal gain but to better the community as well.”

“Ultimately, I chose law because it provides opportunity—the opportunity to solve problems and complex puzzles in creative ways.”

Eric Duhon

Caleb Green

2017 | UNLV Law

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“When I was meeting other attorneys who were Boyd graduates, we all had that in common—we all talked about the community service we did at Boyd. It’s a requirement at Boyd, [which is] really active when it comes to communicating with attorneys in the local community.”

In addition to praising the school’s writing program and the extra attention she’s received from faculty, Schreiber says she’s also grateful that Boyd has broadened her perception of what a law career could offer. “[Criminal law] was initially what I wanted to follow, and it’s still what I want to go into. But seeing the wide range of classes we take, I’m open to different opportunities and ideas,” says Schreiber, specifically citing an interest in alternative dispute resolution, which encourages settling conflict through mediation and other non-litigation methods.

“There is a lot more to the law than what I thought when I entered law school.”

ERIC DUHON Third-year law student Hometown: Reno Organization affiliations: Member of the Society of Advocates; managing editor for Volume 8 of the Gaming Law Journal.

Extracurricular activities: Brazilian jiu-jitsu, weightlifting, working out, flying kites, going for walks, enjoying the outdoors when I can and discovering the pleasures of sedentary life when I cannot.

My favorite part about attending UNLV Law has been … the people. My peers are very caring, collaborative and helpful individuals. They independently offer notes, help and emotional support, even when we are competing for grades and rank. I cannot say enough about the quality of individuals in my class. I expected law school to be a “sink-orswim” experience where students stab each other in the back, and the professors are cold, calculating and intend to humiliate their students daily. But what I have found is students who will bend over backwards for their peers, and a staff and faculty that look for any opportunity to help you individually, professionally and scholastically.

My career goals are … to be a transactional attorney, with an emphasis on real estate and development.

There is the law. There is the passion of those who practice the law. And there is the compassion of those who teach the law—as this thankful student can tell you.

“I found out how much [the law school is] willing to do for you when you need help,” says Duhon, who is still recovering, postsurgery, after a benign mass on his spinal cord was diagnosed this past spring, nearly paralyzing him.

“It happened halfway through the semester. I had to leave school and go live in San Francisco while I waited for surgery,” Duhon says. “My professors worked with me, talked with me on the phone about classes, they moved back exam dates—they did everything I needed to continue to take classes and succeed. The students have been 20

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amazing, too.”

After follow-up surgery in July, Duhon temporarily relied on a cane and wore a neck brace, but he’s on the road to making a complete recovery and remains on track to continue his education.

Reflecting on his time at Boyd, Duhon admits surprise at the experience, claiming he expected it to be similar to the film and TV series, The Paper Chase, which featured an imperious professor who severely pressured—some might say tormented—his students. “In that movie, the teachers lay into you—their intent is to make you look like a fool and feel like an idiot. But it hasn’t been that way [at Boyd],” he says. “The professors have been amazingly supportive. They are challenging, they make you learn [the material], but they take care of you.”

Even though the law has been a de facto family business through the generations— his father and grandfather were attorneys, and his great-grandfather was one of Nevada’s first lawyers—it wasn’t an obvious path for Duhon. He did a lot of traveling while contemplating his career, even considering becoming a brewmaster.

“There were no defining moments or factors that led me to law school,” says Duhon, who is partial to property law, joined the moot-court Society of Advocates and is managing editor for Volume 8 of the 2017-18 edition of the Gaming Law Journal. “Ultimately, I chose law because it provides opportunity— the opportunity to solve problems and complex puzzles in creative ways; to continue learning throughout my lifetime; to explore the many avenues of the law; to be involved in business; and to help people.”

So, what lies ahead post-graduation?

“I think I want to do real estate development and transactional work in general,” Duhon says, citing mergers and acquisitions, land sales, purchase agreements and contracts. “Studying property law really fit into that niche. The concepts just stayed in my head.”

BEATRIZ AGUIRRE Third-year law student Hometown: Las Vegas Organization affiliations: Nevada Law editor for the Nevada Law Journal; educator with Kids Court School, which teaches children witnesses about the court system and testifying on the stand; member of La Voz. Extracurricular activities: Strength training, yoga, traveling and cooking.

My favorite UNLV Law experience has been … experiential learning opportunities. I interned at the U.S Department of Justice Civil Rights Division and the Office for Access to Justice in Washington, D.C. I also spent a summer in Chicago interning for a federal district court judge. Through these experiences, I gained a broad perspective of legal practice and the justice system.

My career goals are … to become a civil rights attorney. I am primarily interested in working on policing and corrections cases that intersect with mental health issues.

Social justice warriors—have they ever been more needed to take the fight to social IN-justice? “Now more than ever,” Aguirre says, “it’s important that you are at the table and continuing to advocate for what’s right.”

Which is precisely what Aguirre was doing prior to attending law school when she held jobs as a social worker, first with the Washoe County Department of Juvenile Services, where she supervised youth on a court-diversion program, then later in the trauma department of University Medical Center in Las Vegas. Aguirre also was a grassroots community organizer for a national comprehensive immigration reform campaign.

But as she later explored additional job possibilities within social work, she concluded that a law degree would be her best avenue to advocate for substantive change.

So, she made a U-turn toward Boyd.

“I realized I wouldn’t be able to have the impact I wanted to [in social work],” Aguirre says. “When I first went to law school, it was with the intention of going into government affairs, but after a few civil procedure classes, I knew I wanted to be a litigator.”

Oddly enough, she almost never had the opportunity to come to that conclusion.

While working as a public information officer at the Nevada Attorney General’s office, Aguirre received notification that her LSAT score from three years earlier— when she was weighing her options—was about to expire. “It was now or never,” Aguirre says. “I was very excited to hear from Boyd, knowing that I wanted to go into civil rights and public interest work. I was fortunate to find Boyd.”

Now, as she nears the finish line, Aguirre expresses gratitude to those who supported her on the journey. “The administration has been so great in helping me to continue to explore my interests at the federal level. And I was able to have incredibly close relationships with my professors that you just don’t see at some of the larger [law] schools.”

Expanding her range of experiences has been another welcome benefit for Aguirre.

She is an editor of the Nevada Law Journal, which will be publishing her student note on criminal justice reform in Nevada, and she had internships and externships with the U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division, as well as the Office for Access to Justice. She also interned with Judge Gary S. Feinerman at the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois.

“I’m a public interest fellow, so I came in with that expectation and understanding that this was the work I wanted to do,” she says, noting that the school offers financial support to enable students to do public interest work during the summer. “Because of that, I was able to go out to Washington, D.C., and have these awesome experiences.”

That’s the UNLV William S. Boyd School of Law—where promising attorneys-inwaiting court their futures.

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... AND JUSTICE FOR ALL

By Steve Bornfeld | Photographs by Connie Palen 22

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Led by a passionate team of student attorneys and staff, the UNLV Immigration Clinic shines rays of hope on young clients in dire need of legal—and emotional— support

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“We’re trying to get their story out no matter how horrible it is, so something good can come out of it, if it helps them remain in this country.”

THEY POUR THEIR HEART INTO THIS WORK. WORK THAT CAN GLADDEN THE HEART. AND SHATTER THE HEART. “It’s hard to ask anyone, let alone kids, to tell you about the worst thing that’s ever happened to them,” Laura Barrera says, “and that’s basically my job.”

Barrera is an attorney with the UNLV Immigration Clinic, whose pro bono mission is to train student lawyers to represent immigrants in deportation proceedings. Most of their clients are unaccompanied immigrant children—most arriving in America with trauma already burdening their young lives. The proceedings in court decide the course of their lives: You can stay. You must go.

“These cases can be very intense and require a delicate bal24

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ance between being emotionally involved in the case and maintaining a professional distance,” says Barrera, who serves as the clinic’s Equal Justice Works Justice AmeriCorps Fellow.

Harassment and threats of violence from Central American street gangs is the major menace bearing down on the clinic’s tender-age clients—largely from El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala, some as young as 4 years old, and up into their teens. Yet other horrors are revealed when these youngsters are gently prodded for details to help attorneys prepare their cases.

“We’ve had some children who

talk about being beaten,” says Martha Arellano, who for the past three years has served as the clinic’s administrative assistant and interpreter/translator, working as a conduit between attorneys and the children. “What’s even harder is that they think they deserved it. ‘Well, I was beaten, but it’s because I did this.’ That makes it even harder to listen to.

“We’ve had other children who have had a close relative, a grandmother or a parent who was shot and killed. It’s tough to comprehend that it becomes just a part of life for anybody—but for a small child? It’s difficult to get through it.”

On the case since 2003—now with approximately 110 open cases on its crowded docket—the clinic’s mission is more relevant than ever. That became starkly clear when the Trump administration canceled the $1.8 million in funding for the AmeriCorps initiative that provided attorneys for unaccompanied minors—minors who face lawyers from the Department of Homeland Security, as well as an often-baffling web of immigration laws.

In 2015, the clinic was one of the first seven entities—and the only law school—to receive the AmeriCorps grant, which was the seed for the clinic’s new Edward M. Bernstein & Associates Children’s Rights Program. The program is named in honor of the respected Las Vegas attorney who earlier this year made a $250,000 donation to ensure that the program will carry on after the AmeriCorps grant expires November 1.

(On that day, Barrera will become the clinic’s first Bernstein Fellow.)

“It’s very hard to be nonpartisan when you work on immigration, but the fact is we are at the front

lines fighting the legal struggles over the future of this country,” says clinic Director Michael Kagan about the immigrant-infused demographic makeup of Clark County. Consider the statistics: 22 percent of Clark County residents are foreign-born, and a language other than English is spoken in 34 percent of homes here, as cited by the U.S. Census. And according to the Pew Research Center, 7.2 percent of Nevada’s population was undocumented in 2014—topping Texas and California.

Hammering home the point: Census Bureau data projects that the current racial/ethnic mix of the Las Vegas Valley mirrors what the rest of America will look like by 2060. That makes Las Vegas—not New York, Chicago, or San Francisco—a model for the future of the nation. “Las Vegas today represents what New York’s Lower East Side was a hundred years ago, and that’s why [the Immigration Clinic] is so important,” Kagan says. “It’s something we should be proud of.”

Putting the clinic’s purpose in perspective, Kagan compares it to

a teaching hospital. “The students do more work for our clients than even well-off people would be able to pay for if they hired a private attorney,” he says. “It’s great for the students and the clients also, because not only do they get representation, but while students don’t bring a great deal of experience, they bring fresh eyes and incredible devotion.”

That free representation is a lifeline to immigrants in dire circumstances. “People who need our services, it’s not a luxury,” Arellano says. “They either can pay the rent or pay an attorney.”

Mayra Salinas-Menjivar is one of the clinic’s alumni who is more familiar than most with their clients’ needs: At age 7, she arrived in Las Vegas from El Salvador with her mother. “She lived through the civil war in El Salvador, so after that she decided it was time to leave,” Salinas-Menjivar says of her mother.

Salinas-Menjivar acknowledges that her own experiences dealing with the immigration system—she filed her own petition for permanent residency after she turned

Together with recent UNLV Law graduate Mayra SalinasMenjivar (left) and attorney Laura Barrera (right), Immigration Clinic Director Michael Kagan oversees the more than 100 cases currently on the clinic’s docket.

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THE GIFT OF FREEDOM Noted Las Vegas attorney Ed Bernstein helps keep the UNLV Immigration Clinic’s doors open with a $250,000 donation

BY STEVE BORNFELD Upon learning what Washington said, his sense of moral obligation called Ed. “After analyzing Trump’s position on immigration, it wasn’t a surprise to me,” says longtime attorney Ed Bernstein, whose firm, Edward M. Bernstein & Associates, reacted to the administration’s yanking of an AmeriCorps initiative—which provided funding for lawyers of unaccompanied immigrant children—by donating $250,000 to the UNLV William S. Boyd School of Law’s Immigration Clinic. Bernstein’s generosity will keep the clinic operating for five more years starting November 1, the day after federal funding expires.

“These kids are the most vulnerable victims of a policy that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. We try to keep terrorists out of the country, which has nothing to do with trying to keep 6-year-olds out.”

Las Vegans know Bernstein from his TV ads, which end with the tagline “Enough Said, Call Ed.” They also know him from his eponymous weekly TV talk show (at 28 seasons, it’s the state’s longest-running program). Zeroing in on his legal career, he should also be known for his myriad court victories (representing clients in the MGM and Hilton fires, PEPCON explosion, and hepatitis outbreak scandal); political accomplishments (a U.S. Senate campaign 26

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and stint as a judge pro tem); and championing of civic/philanthropic causes (raising funds and awareness for the Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation of America, Mothers Against Drunk Driving, and the Clark County School District).

“My wife (Claudia) is Peruvian; she came here 25 years ago. So immigration issues are near and dear to my heart, as is anything having to do with civil liberties and law-related issues,” Bernstein says. “It was a natural combination for me since it involved children. Claudia has been really active at the clinic working with the kids.”

Indeed, assisting the clinic’s Kids’ Court School—which she describes as a “mock trial” simulation—Claudia Bernstein prepares children for their courtroom experience in hopes of relieving their anxiety.

“When children go to court, they get scared; they think they did something wrong,” says Claudia Bernstein, whose work as a life coach enhances her effectiveness. “We explain the process. We don’t coach them on what they are going to say, because they are instructed to tell the truth. But when they go to court, they are not scared by the environment, and they’re aware the system is going to protect them, [so] they don’t feel as vulnerable.”

Occasionally during actual testimony, other abuses against children are revealed. “It’s heartbreaking,” she says. Her husband points out a harsh reality: “Some of these kids are as young as 4 years old, and sometimes if they get sent back [to their native country], they are raped and murdered. In addition to their legal status, we’re looking to save their lives.”

Enough said. That’s Ed.

18—inspired her to become a lawyer.

“I realized how much [immigrants], particularly in the Hispanic community, need reliable attorneys they can trust, and that was one of the reasons I decided to go to law school,” says Salinas, a 2017 graduate of the UNLV William S. Boyd School of Law who took the bar exam in July. “We need more good people to join the profession. I wanted to give back to people in similar situations, and the clinic has provided me with the opportunity to do just that.”

That journey from immigrant to immigration attorney, Kagan says, is demonstrative of the clinic’s positive impact on society. “She is here for her legal abilities, not because of where she came from. But the fact that someone who arrived here as a child refugee can graduate from law school is what this is all about,” he says. “My own wife’s grandfather came to this country as an unaccompanied minor. I want to look at all our clients not just as clients who need help today, but for what they can do and what their grandchildren will do for this community and this country.”

Surviving the process, however, can be grueling, as Barrera notes when recalling a 15-year-old client who was trying to escape the recruitment efforts of the dangerous MS-13 (Mara Salvatrucha) gang. One of the biggest gangs in Central America, MS13 members stalked the teenage boy, even surrounding his home all night on one occasion. That particular night, when the gang members finally dispersed, the boy fled for the U.S. He boarded a bus, crossing land borders on foot so as to avoid detection by the border patrol. Then while traveling by boat across the Rio Grande, he nearly drowned when the boat capsized. Eventually, he was picked up by the border patrol and reunited with family members in Las Vegas.

Unfortunately, making it through such a daring escape is only the first step to starting life anew in America, where the quirks of immigration law often create legal roadblocks. As Barrera notes, sometimes there is little doubt that an immigrant is in dan-

“Las Vegas today represents what New York’s Lower East Side was a hundred years ago, and that’s why [the Immigration Clinic] is so important,” Kagan Immigration Clinic attorney Laura Barrera says that it’s important—but difficult—not to become too emotionally involved in the cases of her young clients.

ger, but the danger is not “for the right reason” — i.e., persecution based on race, religion, nationality, or political views.

When bad news does come, though, Barrera says she is impressed with the grace of her clients and their families. She offers an example of one such client: “He got kind of quiet and looked down, but his dad thanked me for our help and just asked me to let him know what the next step was.

They never get angry or blame me.

Sometimes I imagine how Americans would take news like that.”

Critical to the process is the work of interpreters to bridge the language gap between attorneys and clients, who are overwhelmingly Spanish-speaking children from Central America. Toward that end, a new program that started in the fall semester—one that works in tandem with UNLV’s

Mayra Salinas-Menjivar says her own experiences with the immigration process inspired her to pursue a legal career. She graduated Boyd in spring 2017.

Department of World Languages and Cultures—gives students who are training as interpreters realwork experience in clinic cases. It also instructs law students how to work with interpreters to communicate with clients. “It’s a positive for the child, because they feel it’s someone who speaks their language and they feel more comfortable with this person than with the actual attorney who doesn’t speak [their] language,” says Elena Gandia Garcia, a professor in the World Languages department who heads the new program.

Easing the situation even further is Arellano’s use of the clinic’s playroom, which provides a nonthreatening atmosphere for the youngest children to recount their story. With attorneys and other clinic staff present, Arellano will play UNO and other games, and use various arts and crafts tech-

niques in hopes of coaxing critical details of the children’s lives to support their cases. “Sometimes we have them paint us a picture of their home back in their country: ‘This is where we see the bad people, and this is our house,’” she says. “We’re trying to get their story out no matter how horrible it is, so something good can come out of it, if it helps them remain in this country.”

That, after all, is the point of the passion for the staff of the UNLV Immigration Clinic. “In most cases, if we didn’t represent our clients, nobody would,” Kagan says. “We teach the students that you’ve got to be really sharp on the law, but you also have to be great with people—people who’ve experienced things that hopefully you never will.”

That’s why they’re on the case … after case … after case …

says. “It’s something we should be proud of.”

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After 34 years as a Congressman—including the last 30 as a U.S. Senator—Harry Reid returned home this year and resumed his legal career by accepting a position as UNLV Law’s first Distinguished Fellow in Law and Policy.

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LEGALLY BINDING How does a poor kid from Searchlight reach the pinnacle of the U.S. Capitol?

By first pursuing a career in law.

Here’s the inside story of Harry Reid, Esq.

By Steve Sebelius | Photographs by Joshua Hawkins

B

efore he was Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, before he was the most powerful Nevadan to ever serve in Washington, D.C., before he was revered by Democrats and reviled by Republicans, he was Harry Reid, attorney at law.

It was an unlikely career choice for the boy from tiny Searchlight who grew up in a shack without running water, hitchhiked to high school and was a better athlete than he was a student. Then again, traveling unlikely paths has long been a hallmark for Reid, who retired from the U.S. Senate last year after 34 years in Congress and who this spring joined the UNLV William S. Boyd School of Law as its first Distinguished Fellow in Law and Policy.

As a young man, Reid veered toward the law not because he desired a career in politics where he could author laws himself. Nor did he do it because he wanted to become wealthy or because he had an urge to mix it up with legal and political adversaries—to be sure, Reid grew up more comfortable fighting in a boxing ring than in a courtroom.

Rather, the story of how Reid turned to the law is one of happenstance, the result of two influential figures—one a high school guidance counselor, the other a larger-thanlife Nevada legend—who had more faith in a young Harry Reid than Reid did in himself.

THE GUIDING LIGHT Most attorneys will tell you they developed a passion for education at an early age, but Reid would prove to be an exception. “My parents were uneducated, and that’s an understatement,” Reid says in his office, where he’s heading up a public-policy think tank with former Republican rival and ex-House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio. “My dad didn’t graduate from eighth grade; my mom didn’t graduate from high school. So in my young, youthful mind, education was not a big deal.”

Despite his academic indifference, Reid says he loved his years at Henderson’s Basic High School, 40-plus miles from distant, dusty Searchlight. “I enjoyed high school so much,” says Reid, who played football and baseball. “It was a period in my life that was just idyllic, just a wonderful time.”

Case in point: He was popular enough to be elected junior class treasurer, the first political office he ever held. “I always said the most important election I ever had was [that one],” says Reid, who served for years as the U.S. Senate’s top Democrat. “Now I know that doesn’t sound like much, but for me, that was more important than being elected to any of the statewide offices I had or anything else. Because I was able to feel I’d been accepted by my peers.”

Later, some girls approached and asked him to run for class president, a request that caught Reid off guard. But he took up the

challenge and won. “I surprised myself more than I surprised anybody else,” Reid says.

“Of course, it didn’t surprise my mother.”

Winning those elections brought Reid acceptance, but the most pivotal moment of his halcyon high school days occurred when he met with a counselor named Dorothy Robinson, who offered some life-changing advice: You, she told him, should go to law school.

How Robinson arrived at that conclusion will remain a mystery—after all, Reid didn’t exactly challenge for class valedictorian.

“My grades,” he recalls, “were not worth a damn in high school. I never studied. I wasn’t interested in academic things.” Still, Reid fought the urge to challenge Robinson’s recommendation. “I didn’t say, ‘Why did you say that, Miss Robinson?’ I said, ‘OK.’ She told me that’s what I should do, [so] that’s what I decided to do, even though I hadn’t started college yet.”

After graduating from Basic, Reid enrolled at Southern Utah University, then transferred to Utah State on an athletic scholarship. But he soon sustained an injury that sidelined him from competition—a blessing in disguise, because it convinced him to finally start taking his studies seriously. It didn’t take long for Reid to realize that he not only liked academics, but he had an aptitude for it.

All the while, Dorothy Robinson’s advice remained in the back of his mind, so after graduating from Utah State in 1961 with a degree in political science and history, 2017 | UNLV Law

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“My grades were not worth a damn in high school. I never studied. I wasn’t interested in academic things.”

– Harry Reid

Reid applied to a handful of law schools. Of course, at the time, there wasn’t a law school in Nevada, leaving would-be attorneys to seek their legal education elsewhere.

Reid actually turned down a scholarship offer from Santa Clara University in northern California, instead opting to attend George Washington University in Washington, D.C., at the suggestion of Mike O’Callaghan, who before becoming Nevada’s governor was one of Reid’s earlylife mentors.

At the time, many young Nevadans who were in D.C. preparing for careers in law or public service would accept patronage jobs working for the state’s Congressional delegation. Reid applied for such a post with then-Congressman Walter Baring, a conservative Democrat. Baring denied the application in a letter addressed to “Mr. Reed.”

The rejection didn’t sit well with O’Callaghan, who had taught Reid in high school, coached him in boxing and would influence the course of Reid’s life and career more than once. Chairman of the Clark County Democratic Party at the time, O’Callaghan decided to advocate for his protégé. “Typical for O’Callaghan, he picked up the phone right in front of me and said, ‘I’ll get that SOB on the phone,’” Reid recalls. After vouching for his former student, O’Callaghan made it clear: Reid’s “coming to Washington, I want him to have a job, and you’re going to get him one, OK?” That’s how Harry Reid ended up in Washington as both a law student and a member of the United States Capitol Police.

(He still displays his silver, eagle-topped badge, encased in Lucite, on his desk.)

‘I HATED THAT DAMN PLACE’ If Reid loved high school and grew to enjoy his undergrad days, he loathed law school. The pressures of raising a family with his wife, Landra, and working the 3 p.m. to 11 p.m. shift as a cop after attending school in the mornings were, as Reid recalls, “a grind.” He resolved to work as hard as necessary to finish his studies as swiftly as possible. “I went to law school full time.

I went summers—the whole works,” he says. “I wanted to get out of there as fast as I could. I hated that damn place.”

So accelerated was Reid’s law-school schedule that he finished in a little more than two years, and had to petition the Nevada Supreme Court to take the bar exam early. “I took the bar before I’d graduated from law school, so there were some courses I hadn’t taken. But I bluffed my way through that,” he says.

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The newly minted attorney returned to Nevada to take a job at the law firm of Singleton, DeLanoy, and Jemison. And thanks to the suggestion of his father-in-law, one of his first clients was the City of Henderson, where he worked part time as the city attorney while representing other clients at the firm. (In a historical bookend, Reid’s son, Josh, is now the full-time city attorney in Henderson.)

Reid’s clients also included insurance companies, and he did criminal work. Both allowed him to gain valuable trial experience, and in time, he became quite comfortable in the courtroom—and successful. Like all good trial lawyers, Reid kept score; he says he worked more than 100 trials in his day, and only lost only a handful. It’s a pretty impressive batting average—especially considering some of his clients at the time.

“I would take cases no one else would take,” he says.

Such as the one involving a cocktail waitress from the Hacienda Hotel & Casino who was arrested at work and charged with writing bad checks. The woman denied the allegations, but had trouble finding an attorney who would represent her. Enter Reid, who determined that his client hadn’t been given the required advanced notice—nor had she been given the opportunity to dispute the claim—prior to her arrest. Reid sued one of the businesses—the Safeway grocery store chain—that had complained about the bad checks. During the trial, he called Safeway’s corporate officers to testify about the company’s profits, a tactic that paved the way for his client to recover damages after a jury ruled she had been falsely accused.

In another case no other attorney seemed to want to tackle, Reid sued several doctors who had failed to diagnose a brain tumor in a woman from his hometown of Searchlight.

The woman had been plagued with headaches for so long that she self-medicated with alcohol. Her physicians dismissed her as an alcoholic; Reid contended the woman’s physicians failed to provide proper care, and won compensation for the woman’s neglect.

But one of Reid’s most memorable cases involved a lawsuit filed against the Tropicana Estates apartment complex, which evicted Reid’s client—he freely acknowledges she was a prostitute—for failure to pay rent. One problem: Prior to the eviction, the apartment’s management didn’t give proper notice as required by law. What’s more, the landlord, after locking the woman out of her apartment, recklessly threw her belongings in storage. By the time the woman could pay back rent and retrieve her belongings, some

of her possessions had been destroyed, including photographs of her former lover who had died in a vehicle accident while driving back from his job at the Nevada Test Site. After consulting with other attorneys, Reid sued Tropicana Estates and won punitive damages for his client’s lost memories.

In addition to working his own cases, Reid says he continued to sharpen his legal skills by attending trials of prominent lawyers, most notably Harry Claiborne. Claiborne was a highly successful defense attorney who would later be appointed federal judge only to get impeached and be removed from office by the U.S. Senate after being convicted on tax evasion charges. But as a trial lawyer, Reid says Claiborne was spellbinding. “It was unbelievable” watching him work, he says.

THE NEXT GENERATION As was the case when Reid was a practicing attorney, great trial lawyers and judges are still at work in Southern Nevada courtrooms today. The big difference is many of them were educated in their backyard at the William S. Boyd School of Law, which opened in 1998.

Not only has the law school enhanced UNLV’s profile over the past two decades, but Reid says it has unquestionably raised the legal talent bar throughout the state and widened the pool of choices for those in need of a quality, experienced attorney. Additionally, some UNLV Law alumni have returned to campus to pay it forward to the next generation of graduates by teaching classes in their area of expertise.

“I think, No. 1, the law school has been supported by the community. You have benefactors like Bill Boyd, of course, the Boyd family, and [other] people who have been willing to step in and help,” he says. “The law school has [developed] a pretty good reputation, so they’ve been able to [attract] some really good students.”

Not to be discounted, Reid says, are the important partnerships created by the law school and community at-large through such things as education programs and legal clinics.

As much as anything, though, Reid says the presence of UNLV Law means local aspiring lawyers have an option he never had: the chance to attend law school close to home and avoid adding exorbitant out-of-state tuition fees to an already pricey law-school bill.

Indeed, 76 percent of UNLV Law’s 108 enrolled students for the 2017-18 academic year are Nevada residents. As for that enrollment number, there’s certainly room for expansion, but Reid cautions doing so could prove

After racing through law school and passing the bar, Harry Reid quickly established himself as a lawyer to be reckoned with— including in the courtroom, where he estimates he won all but a handful of his more than 100 trials.

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counterproductive. “They could triple the size of the law school, but that diminishes the quality of the students entering the law school,” he says.

That doesn’t mean UNLV Law won’t evolve, Reid says. In fact, the former senator will be part of that evolution in his role as a Distinguished Fellow in Law and Policy.

This perch will allow Reid to share his own knowledge gleaned in politics and law. He’ll also be able to tap contacts ranging from the former head of the Bureau of Land Management to the former head of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to conduct seminars for students studying public lands law or energy law.

ON SECOND THOUGHT …

Some six decades have passed since Reid had that pivotal meeting with his counselor that set him on his life’s course. But as he looks into his rearview mirror and recalls what Dorothy Robinson told him—“I think you should go to law school”—he also recalls being quite naïve.

“I didn’t know a lawyer, I’d never been to a courthouse,” he says. “She told me that’s what I should do, and it was good enough for me. [But] I was not prepared to go to law school. If you have a good mind and a good memory, you can do well [in] undergraduate school, because you just memorize stuff.

In law school, that doesn’t work. You have to be able to think things through.”

As challenging as law school was for him, Reid doesn’t regret pursuing a law degree. He’s quick to acknowledge that his experiences as an attorney helped him in every facet of his career, from serving in the state assembly and as lieutenant governor (under O’Callaghan), to being chairman of the Gaming Commission during the tumultuous, mob-rich days of Las Vegas, to his 50 years of public service.

“Law school is good preparation for basically anything you want to do,” he says.

Which explains why he passed on the gene: All four of Reid’s sons—despite their father’s discouragement—chose a career in law. However, Reid notes that his sons’ road to success in the legal community was paved much more smoothly than his own.

For one thing, the industry today is more professional, more regulated, and more specialized. Then there’s the modern-day teaching of law, which Reid says is kinder than in his day. “Law school is much more humane now than when I went,” he says. “Law schools used to take just about anybody and then flunk people out. When we started school, the dean would say, ‘Look around.

Every fourth or fifth one of you is going to flunk out of school.’ How’s that make you feel? Now, they want to keep you in school because they’ve invested in getting you into the school, and they don’t want to lose you.

“Times have changed so remarkably. It’s not like it used to be.”

The fact UNLV has the William S. Boyd School of Law is proof positive of that.

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“If you have a good mind and a good memory, you can do well [in] undergraduate school, because you just memorize stuff. In law school, that doesn’t work. You have to be able to think things through.”

– Harry Reid

When Harry Reid attended law school, students were almost set up to fail. That’s no longer the case, which the retired U.S. Senator says is a good thing. “Law school is much more humane now than when I went.”

FACULTY SCHOLARSHIP, PRESENTATIONS, AND OTHER NEWS

FACULTY FOCUS

“When you practice criminal law, you have the opportunity to think about the constitution every day and work to protect the values that are embedded in it.” Eve Hanan, UNLV Law associate professor PROFILES

Fighting the Good Fight EVE HANAN BRINGS CAREER-LONG PASSIONS FOR CRIMINAL LAW AND JUVENILE JUSTICE TO NEW ROLES AT UNLV

BY CAMILLE CANNON Upon reviewing Eve Hanan’s background, it’s difficult to determine what’s more impressive: her credentials, or how she goes about applying them in her work. Perhaps it’s best to call it a tie.

A new associate professor at the UNLV William S. Boyd School of Law, Hanan not only possesses a JD from University of Michigan Law School, but also a master’s in creative arts therapy from Drexel University in Philadelphia. She has practiced law as a public defender and worked as a restorative justice facilitator. And she is currently writing two scholarly articles—one on how implicit biases affect judges’ perception of remorse; the other on how new neuroscience might impact sentencing.

Mind you, Hanan does all this while managing two households as her husband and two children prepare to relocate from Maryland. And as if that’s not enough, by fall 2018, Hanan—who will teach Criminal Procedure and Criminal Law at the UNLV William S. Boyd School of Law—will have rolled out the school’s new Juvenile Justice Clinic.

Judging by her résumé, it’s clear that Hanan is deeply passionate about both practicing and teaching criminal law—passions she says began to surface while a law student at Michigan. There she worked in a clinic with her criminal law professor An34

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drea Lyon, a former death penalty defense lawyer in Cook County, Illinois.

“Working with her, I found that many of the constitutional values play out daily in criminal court,” Hanan says. “When you practice criminal law, you have the opportunity to think about the constitution every day and work to protect the values that are embedded in it.”

Those values further informed Hanan as she worked as a neutral restorative jus-

tice facilitator in Baltimore, where she saw juvenile justice reform come to life. “It was eye-opening for me to do this kind of work and see how young people who may be on a track to end up in adult prison can, through a supportive, different kind of process, stay out of that system and get the support they need to take accountability for their own actions.”

Inspired by that work, Hanan went on to co-create the Juvenile Justice Project at the University of Baltimore Law School, where her students advocated for clients sentenced to life in prison as juveniles.

Now as she begins her journey at Boyd, Hanan intends to combine her past experience with new research to develop UNLV’s latest Juvenile Justice Clinic.

Hanan follows Mary Berkheiser, director of the law school’s first Juvenile Justice Clinic and now an emerita professor of law with the law school.

This year, in addition to teaching her courses at Boyd, Hanan is meeting with community partners and faculty members to assess needs for the new clinic.

“We want to make sure students have a broad range of experiences in what criminal practice is like,” she says. “We also want something that’s going to be beneficial to the Clark County community, in terms of the services provided.”

Hanan says she is also eager to collaborate with the Saltman Center for Conflict Resolution, given the overlapping areas of interest in restorative justice and resolving disputes through negotiation rather than litigation.

“I’m really looking forward to being part of the law faculty at UNLV. It’s very distinguished in terms of their scholarship and their teaching,” she says. “I want to be a part of making sure UNLV is at the forefront of national academic discussions about how we can approach sentencing and incarceration in more sensible ways.”

“Getting a law degree allowed me to do things that I would not have thought were possible when I was contemplating law school.”

Benjamin Edwards, UNLV Law associate professor FACULTY FOCUS

PROFILES

Taking Care of Business FROM THE COURTROOM TO THE CLASSROOM, BENJAMIN EDWARDS OWNS A WEALTH OF CORPORATE LEGAL EXPERIENCE

BY CAMILLE CANNON Most Americans watched the legal aftermath of Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme and the 2008 financial crisis unfold on television.

Benjamin Edwards recalls watching it onscreen during the elevator ride to his 40thfloor office at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP in New York City. That’s where Edwards was an associate attorney working on multidistrict litigation that arose from Madoff’s scam, as well as representing clients in litigation stemming from the mortgage-backed securities crisis.

Back then, the news cycle was Edwards’ everyday reality—a reality he never envisioned, especially as his first real-world legal experience following his clerkship with the U.S. District Court in Memphis, Tennessee.

“Getting a law degree,” Edwards says, “allowed me to do things that I would not have thought were possible when I was contemplating law school.”

That includes teaching.

Edwards this year joined the UNLV William S. Boyd School of Law as an associate professor. He arrives after having taught courses in business organizations, securities regulation and securities litigation at Barry University Dwayne O. Andreas School of Law in Orlando, Florida, as well as Michigan

FACULTY AWARDS Professor Mary Beth Beazley, a leading scholar in the field of legal writing, received the Marjorie Rombauer Award. This award salutes someone who has contributed significantly to the legal writing field through scholarship, education and efforts to improve the status of legal writing.

The Association of Legal Writing Directors recognized Professor Linda Berger with the inaugural Linda Berger Lifetime Achievement Award for Excellence in Le-

State University College of Law. Edwards first began to consider following his father into a career in law after a trip to Harvard for his high school debate tournament. “I walked around campus as a public-school kid from South Carolina, and thought, ‘I would like to go there for law school.’” Edwards jokes that he “failed” by instead graduating from Columbia Law School. “It’s turned out all right,” he says.

gal Writing Scholarship, which celebrates those who have significantly impacted the field of legal writing through scholarly efforts.

Professor Linda Edwards, the E.L. Cord Foundation Professor of Law, received the Burton Award for Outstanding Legal Writing for Education. This unique national awards program was established in 1999 to reward great achievements in law, and is presented to a leading law school educator who has promoted and advanced

Edwards’ success as a practicing corporate attorney has followed him back into the classroom, where he’s left his imprint as a scholar on business and securities law. Among his accomplishments, Edwards founded an Investor Advocacy clinic at Michigan State that helped clients recover hundreds of thousands of dollars in personal losses.

That experience allowed Edwards to develop expertise in the area of investment advice, a topic about which he’s written for several platforms, including penning op-ed pieces for The Washington Post. In his scholarship, Edwards also researches corporate governance, with a specific focus on how corporations tackle issues of cyber security.

In addition to his classroom duties at Boyd, he’s also developing a new clinical offering focused on business and securities issues. Edwards expects that the clinic will represent investors in securities arbitration, and engage with federal and state regulators crafting new investor-protection rules. The new clinic will likely work in collaboration with the Saltman Center for Conflict Resolution.

Peering into his crystal ball, Edwards sees Nevada becoming the epicenter for corporate law, with UNLV Law being the hub.

“It’s a very exciting time for corporate law in Nevada, which is the leading alternative to Delaware,” says Edwards, referring to the two states that are highly favored locations for business incorporations. “Being able to develop relationships with community practitioners and judges that shape Nevada corporate law is really incredible.”

legal writing.

Founding faculty member Professor Terrill Pollman was honored with the 2017 UNLV Foundation Distinguished Teaching Award.

Nancy Rapoport, Garman Turner Gordon Professor of Law and Special Counsel to the President of UNLV, was awarded the Lawrence P. King Award by the Commercial Law League of America’s Bankruptcy Section. The King Award is presented annually to a lawyer, judge, teacher or legislator

who exemplifies the best in scholarship, advocacy, judicial administration or legislative activities in the field of bankruptcy.

Doris S. and Theodore B. Lee Professor of Law Professor Jeffrey Stempel has been honored with the Robert B. McKay Law Professor Award. This recognition goes to attorneys who have demonstrated commitment to the advancement of justice, scholarship, and the legal profession through their contributions to the fields of tort and insurance law.

2017 | UNLV Law

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“One of the lines I like to use is, ‘Legal writing is not about grammar any more than tax law is about math.’”

Mary Beth Beazley UNLV Law professor and former president of the Legal Writing Institute FACULTY FOCUS

Write On

RENOWNED PROFESSOR MARY BETH BEAZLEY ENHANCES REPUTATION OF SCHOOL’S STELLAR LEGAL WRITING PROGRAM

BY CAMILLE CANNON In 1998, Mary Beth Beazley authored an essay titled “‘Riddikulus!’: Tenure-Track Legal-Writing Faculty and the Boggart in the Wardrobe.”

Beazley, a legal writing professional with nearly 35 years of teaching experience, draws a comparison between the shape-shifting, fear-exploiting monsters of Harry Potter to the traditions and institutions “that allow legal writing to be taught but curse its teachers to a short academic life—limited by caps on contracts or thwarted by positions that allow no job security or opportunity for scholarship.”

Unlike the fictional boggarts, these impositions have plagued Beazley’s entire career. Fortunately, though, they’re what led the awardwinning professor, textbook author, former chair of the American Bar Association’s Communications Skills Committee, and past president of the Legal Writing Institute to the UNLV William S. Boyd School of Law. It’s a perfect fit, in that Beazley has joined a law school whose legal writing program is ranked second nationally by U.S. News & World Report. “UNLV has a wonderful reputation for legal writing, and it’s an equal opportunity school,” Beazley says.

Beazley recently arrived at UNLV after having previously taught legal writing at The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law (where she spent 29 years), University of Toledo College of Law and Vermont Law School. Early in her career, many law schools (including Vermont) required legal writing faculty to leave their positions after two years. The reason? “They thought nobody would want to do it after two years,” Beazley says. “A lot of people see the teaching of writing as the closest thing in the academy to manual labor.

They think it’s not as intellectual or there’s not really scholarship to be done relevant to legal writing.”

Beazley has challenged that assumption with her work, even studying and applying behavioral-science principles to legal writing and reading. (For example, how does text capitalization and structure affect how we interpret legal documents?) “One of the lines I like to use is, ‘Legal writing is not about grammar any more than tax law is about math,’” she says.

Among Beazley’s scholarly contributions is a chapter on “Learning to Think Like a Wizard” in The Law and Harry Potter (she fell in love with the books in the 1990s while reading them to her two children). And, yes, that makes two of her publications inspired by the fictional wizard.

Away from Hogwarts, Beazley is currently researching how our ability to retain information is affected by reading on digital platforms. She’ll continue her scholarship during the academic year as she teaches classes in legal writing and appellate advocacy at Boyd.

On the personal front, Beazley—who had previously never lived west of the Mississippi River—is getting used to her new desert environs. “For the first couple days here, I was taking pictures of the mountains at every stoplight,” she says. “I’m kind of getting over that now and realizing that this is my new everyday life.”

New, and finally free of boggarts.

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UNLV Law | 2017

PROFILES

“I’m looking forward to working with ... [our] state government . Because we’re the only law school [in Nevada], it’s an opportunity for us to have a big impact.” Dr. David Orentlicher, UNLV Law professor and co-director of the Health Law program PROFILES

FACULTY FOCUS

Meet the Good Doctor (and lawyer … and legislator … and professor …)

SELECTED SCHOLARLY WORKS FROM THE FACULTY

DR. DAVID ORENTLICHER’S ACHIEVEMENTS ARE AS IMPRESSIVE AS THEY ARE DIVERSE. THAT’S GOOD NEWS FOR UNLV LAW— AND BEYOND

BY CAMILLE CANNON Only those dedicated enough to endure sleepless nights and endless studying would voluntarily sign up for three years of law school. But signing up for three years of law school after completing four years of sleepless nights and endless studying in medical school? That requires a level of commitment only a handful of humans possess.

Well, Dr. David Orentlicher not only pulled off this ultra-rare MD/ JD double, he did so at Harvard.

Since securing his degrees, the new Cobeaga Law Firm Professor of Law and co-director of the Health Law program at the UNLV William S. Boyd School of Law has built an equally impressive career as a family physician and law professional … and educator … and state legislator … and author … and ethics advocate.

“I’ve been able to use my training in [law and medicine] to address very important issues,” Orentlicher says.

That’s putting it humbly.

Most recently, Orentlicher was on the faculty at Indiana University’s Robert H. McKinney School of Law and Indiana University School of Medicine. He’s also served as an adjunct or visiting professor at the University of Chicago Law School, Northwestern University School of Medicine and Princeton University, while also finding the time to author multiple books and write for several national outlets, including The New York Times and USA Today.

From 1989 to 1995, Orentlicher directed the American Medical Association’s division of medical ethics. During that time, he developed guidelines on issues such as organ transplantations, medical-care access and patients’ rights—guidelines that impacted federal decision-making. (Who can say they were sitting in the courtroom when Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor cited their brief?)

On top of that, Orentlicher served an economically diverse district of Indiana in the state’s House of Representatives from 2002 to 2008. “I had to represent the poorest, the richest and a lot of people in between,” he says. “That made me a better legislator.”

Orentlicher tackled Indiana’s high rate of child-abuse deaths by introducing legislation to increase the number of caseworkers who could help prevent such tragedies.

He also authored bills that made it easier for Indiana-based businesses to find startup funding and that offered tax breaks to employers to make health care more affordable.

Luckily for the Las Vegas com-

munity, Orentlicher says he sees his new job as an opportunity to extend his scholarship and public service, especially now that the UNLV School of Medicine has opened.

“I’m looking forward to working with students and faculty at the medical school. And also with state government,” he says. “Because we’re the only law school [in Nevada], it’s an opportunity for us to have a big impact.

“One of the courses I’m going to teach in the spring is a health legislative advocacy and drafting course. I’ll speak with legislators and see what they would like help with and have students prepare legislation that will hopefully be introduced, and the students can then work on getting their proposals passed.”

In addition to teaching, Orentlicher says he will continue his scholarly research on income and education inequality in America, and the actions that communities, school districts and universities can take to cultivate equality … whether students aspire to pursue one degree or two.

Benjamin P. Edwards, Conflicts & Capital Allocation, 78 Ohio St. L.J. 182 (2017).

Linda H. Edwards, Speaking of Stories and Law, 13 J. Legal Comm. & Rhetoric: JAWLD 157 (2016).

Sara Gordon, The Use and Abuse of MutualSupport Programs in Drug Courts, 2017 U. Ill. L. Rev. 1503 (2017).

Ruben J. Garcia, An Equally Divided Court: Workplace Law in the U.S. Supreme Court 2015-2016, 20 Emp. Rts. & Emp. Pol’y J. 197 (2016).

Michael Kagan, The Public Defender’s Pin: Untangling Free Speech Regulation in the Courtroom, 111 Nw. U. L. Rev. Online 125 (2017).

Lydia Nussbaum, Trial and Error: Legislating Medical Malpractice for ADR Reform, 76 Md. L. Rev. 247 (2017).

Addie C. Rolnick, Recentering Tribal Criminal Jurisdiction, 63 UCLA L. Rev. 1638 (2016).

Rebecca L. Scharf, Game of Drones: Rolling the Dice with Unmanned Aerial Vehicles and Privacy, Utah L. Rev. (forthcoming 2018).

Jean R. Sternlight, Hurrah for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau: Consumer Arbitration as a Poster Child for Regulation, 48 St. Mary’s L. J. 343 (2016).

Stacey A. Tovino, On Health, Law, and Religion, 74 Wash. & Lee L. Rev. (forthcoming 2017).

Marketa Trimble, U.S. State Copyright Laws: Challenge and Potential, 20 Stanford Tech. L. R. (forthcoming 2017).

2017 | UNLV Law

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“I am hopeful that my research in Turkey can inform advocacy and activism to end violence against women here in the U.S.” Elizabeth MacDowell, UNLV Law professor, director of the Family Justice Clinic PROFILES

FACULTY FOCUS

Answering the Call for Justice FULBRIGHT AWARD SENDS PROFESSOR ELIZABETH MACDOWELL TO TURBULENT TURKEY TO CONDUCT VITAL FAMILY LAW RESEARCH

BY LAUNCE RAKE Usually when we think of war, civil unrest and conflict, we think of the obvious victims: refugees, injured soldiers, destroyed property. Elizabeth MacDowell, UNLV Law professor and director of the Family Justice Clinic, reminds us that there are other impacts that aren’t always as obvious.

MacDowell was recently selected for a prestigious Fulbright Award to conduct research on family law in Turkey during the 2017-18 academic year. As a senior researcher at Anadolu University in Eskisehir—a city nearly equidistant from Istanbul in Turkey’s northwest, and Ankara, the capital in the country’s center—she will be looking closely at issues of access to justice for domestic violence survivors.

Family courts and law are, like other basic institutions of society and government, affected by the convulsive events that have plagued Turkey and Western Asia over the last several years. An attempted coup d’état in July 2016 failed to topple the presidency of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who reacted with a crackdown and imprisonment of thousands of perceived political opponents.

Next door in Syria, six years of grinding civil war have killed, according to United Nations estimates, some 400,000 people and sent 5 million refugees out of the country—many of them to, or through, Turkey.

And Turkey faces domestic threats from Islamists and from Kurdish separatists.

In fact, a suicide attack in Istanbul’s historic Sultanahmet District killed 13 people in January 2016. Then in the ensuing two months, bombs ripped through urban neighborhoods in Ankara.

These conditions make the study of family law in Turkey both challenging and fascinating to MacDowell, who arrived at Anadolu University in September.

“Things are in a constant state of flux,” she says. “I talked to researchers who were 38

UNLV Law | 2017

there after the attempted coup, during the bombings, and it was a very tense time. The researchers really reaffirmed how important it is to be there as part of the Fulbright program—being there and doing research.”

In this period of uncertainty, the structures designed to protect vulnerable populations, which include women, have been stressed. Turkey has family courts and civil remedies to safeguard women, but now they can be threatened in refugee communities. Women also can encounter threats from “honor” killings in their own families; there is human trafficking; and of course they still face the threat of violence from intimate domestic partners.

“There are larger questions of violence against women and how legal systems respond,” MacDowell said. “When there are challenges like this, vulnerable people and groups, such as women, may become more vulnerable.”

As a Fulbright scholar, which is one of the world’s best recognized and respected research institutions, MacDowell will have access to social strata that not all researchers would share. The Fulbright Program works cooperatively with more than 155

nations, and in 49 of them, the binational commissions (including one in Turkey) approve scholarship projects. So in a very real sense, MacDowell has the approval of an important institution in Turkey to conduct her research.

MacDowell credits a colleague, Sahar Maranlou, for inspiring her to apply for this particular Fulbright Award. She met Maranlou—a scholar at the University of Oxford and an expert on legal empowerment of women in the Middle East—at a conference in Turkey in 2015.

“She encouraged me to consider researching in a Muslim-majority country, where it is often challenging to study violence against women because of religious and cultural constraints,” MacDowell says. “That was when I began focusing on conducting research in Turkey.”

MacDowell explains that she hopes to interview family court judges, lawyers and civil society organizations working on violence against women to better understand how the Turkish legal system works for survivors and advocacy strategies on their behalf. She also hopes to find ways to share her findings with research participants in ways that can make a difference.

Putting things in real-life terms, Maranlou says MacDowell’s research very well could contribute to efforts to improve access to justice for women in Turkey.

“Domestic violence against women is a serious concern in many communities,” Maranlou says. “Elizabeth’s study is a significant effort to shed light on how advocacy and legal empowerment can provide better access for victims of domestic violence in Turkey.”

While MacDowell’s research aims to better the lives of Turkish women, it’s also intended to benefit the United States, where women continue to face significant rates of domestic violence and problems accessing justice.

“An important objective of the Fulbright program is that grantees’ home countries benefit from what they learn abroad,” MacDowell says. “Turkish scholars and activists have different frames for understanding domestic violence and different tools and strategies for advocating for change. I am hopeful that my research in Turkey can inform advocacy and activism to end violence against women here in the U.S.”

“One thing I gained working for two presidential administrations is tremendous respect for the men and women who are career civil servants, working to administer the laws of the nation.” Bret Birdsong, UNLV Law professor FACULTY FOCUS

PROFILES

Back in the Saddle PROFESSOR BRET BIRDSONG RETURNS TO HIS UNLV LAW POST AFTER A FOUR-YEAR STINT SERVING THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION

BY LAUNCE RAKE Students may have missed Professor Bret Birdsong on the UNLV William S. Boyd School of Law campus over the last three years, but it’s not like he’s been away on vacation.

While on leave from the law school from 2013 to 2016, Birdsong served the Obama administration as Deputy Solicitor for Land Resources at the U.S. Department of the Interior, providing counsel to the interior secretary on issues affecting the National Park Service, the Bureau of Land Management, and other public lands agencies.

The position kept Birdsong at the forefront of conservation and land-management policy issues, which has been his area of focus since starting his law career nearly 25 years ago. Birdsong has served as a lawyer with the Environment and Natural Resources Division of the U.S. Department of Justice and as a trial lawyer focusing on public land and natural resources litigation. Also, as an Ian Axford Fellow in Public Policy in 1998, he studied New Zealand’s specialized Environment Court and served as a visiting fellow in the office of New Zealand’s Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment.

Birdsong’s scholarly work reflects his professional interest, and in 2013 he was a co-author of Natural Resources Law: A PlaceBased Book of Problems and Cases. He also edited chapters on federal reserved water rights and interstate water allocation in the treatise Waters and Water Rights.

Birdsong joined UNLV Law in 2000, and has since taught Environmental Quality Law, Public Lands and Natural Resources Law, Administrative Law, Property Law, and Civil Procedure. Through his instruction and research on these topics, he has learned to point his car away from the Strip and toward the direction of the public lands that are so prevalent in this part of the country.

“I grew up on the East Coast, but went to law school in California [University of Cali-

fornia, Hastings College of the Law], where I gained my first exposure to the fascinating aspects of natural resources development and conservation in the American West—specifically how water scarcity and the unique history of public land disposition and conservation shape not just the ecosystems, but the whole landscape and society of the intermountain West,” he says.

Furthering his understanding of publicland and conservation policy are his two stints in Washington, D.C.: In addition to his senior political role under President Obama, Birdsong held a civil servant position during Bill Clinton’s presidency.

“I’ve had the good fortune to serve the

public during two different presidential administrations,” Birdsong says. “One thing I gained in both is tremendous respect for the men and women who are career civil servants, working day in and out to administer the laws of the nation.”

As for the current administration, Birdsong admits to feelings of trepidation. “I am chagrined, of course, to see many of the policy initiatives I worked on in the Obama administration being considered for rolling back,” he says.

At the same time, he’s also taking a long view.

“The change of presidential administrations means that different hands are on the policy levers,” he says. “And I am confident that, in our rule-of-law system, those levers will ultimately have to be operated in accordance with the law. That may mean that the courts will be involved in ensuring accountability to the law, as they have been in other areas already.”

In the meantime, Birdsong suggests UNLV Law students embrace the opportunity to be at the forefront of policy debates shaping natural-resource law and the West.

“Everyone at Boyd is a citizen of the American West, and that citizenship is shaped by public lands—both the history and the current issues confronting us,” he says. “So, the first thing—and maybe the most important thing—that all of us can do is to wield the tools of civic involvement. Inform yourselves on what is going on. Get involved.

“But Boyd graduates, as lawyers, can do even more. They can provide legal representation to others who are involved in the public lands, whether [they be] users of natural resources like ranchers, miners, renewable energy companies or recreationists, or environmental advocates. Legal representation is a way to shape the landscape and the future.”

2017 | UNLV Law

39

“I’m an academic. I’m sort of insulated from market pressures, because I’m in a marketplace of ideas .”

Lori D. Johnson, UNLV Law associate professor PROFILES

FACULTY FOCUS

Watch Your Language AS MANY LAWYERS RACE TO MODERNIZE CERTAIN LEGAL TERMS, UNLV LAW PROFESSOR LORI JOHNSON CAUTIONS TO PUMP THE BRAKES

BY LAUNCE RAKE What’s in a word? What’s in a phrase?

For Professor Lori D. Johnson, quite a bit.

Johnson, who joined the faculty at the UNLV William S. Boyd School of Law in 2010 and teaches professional responsibility, transactional drafting and lawyering process, has metaphorically shaken some trees by challenging the modern idea that contracts should be reduced to “plain language.”

It isn’t that she’s universally opposed to plain language—that is, simplified descriptions of the law that many in the profession now champion, especially when it comes to consumer contracts, where it’s important for lay people to understand the meaning of what they’re signing. But when you are lawyering among other lawyers, sometimes the tested terms of yesteryear can be vital.

For example, when you’re working on a massive multimillion-dollar merger-andacquisition deal with other lawyers—some in adversarial roles—Johnson believes there are specific meanings among the “terms of art” that the legal community should think twice about before jettisoning. “There’s been a big movement over the last 30 years or so for plain language,” Johnson says.

“It’s mostly about consumer contracts and the drafting of laws, with people demanding that they be written in language that is clearer and easier to understand, more accessible to lay people.”

But some phrases—several of which Johnson cites in a paper she had published last year in the University of Cincinnati Law Review—have such specific legal meanings that they cannot be easily converted into “plain language.” In fact, trying to do so can create problems for both lawyers and the courts, for two reasons: The substitute language can be longer and ungainly, and not everyone will clearly understand the new wording.

As an example, Johnson points to the oftused legal phrase “time is of the essence,” 40

UNLV Law | 2017

which Webster’s New World defines as follows: “Contractual provision that requires prompt and timely fulfillment of obligations under the contract; failure to complete performance under time constraints set forth in the document may constitute a breach.”

“Within the law, there are phrases that have been interpreted by courts for hundreds of years,” she says. “They signal a really specific meaning to the courts. … The rephrasing of ‘time is of the essence’ is actually longer than the phrase itself.”

That’s not to say Johnson believes the language of the law can’t be simplified. (“Whereas, aforementioned, heretofore … are best left in the Middle Ages,” she says.)

She simply cautions that certain legal terms, while considered archaic by some, are best left untouched. “There is a small subset of terms that have a special meaning in the law,” she says. “I do think we have an obligation to explain those terms to our clients, but I don’t know if we should always change those terms of art, those specialized phrases that have a specific meaning under the law.”

Another common illustration that speaks to the complexity of legal language is the

difference between “will” and “shall,” two seemingly interchangeable words that in recent years have come back to haunt state legislatures and their courts, including Nevada’s. In truth, the words have different meanings when used in a legal context.

“Will” can be open-ended; the term implies that an action will happen sometime in the future. Conversely, “shall” can be interpreted as requiring a party to take action —an “immediate obligation”—to make something happen.

In this case, Johnson notes that conversion to “plain language” can confuse rather than clarify.

Suffice it to say, not everyone in the legal community is standing on Johnson’s end of the language sideline—in particular, those who have a made an investment in the “plain language” movement offer push-back to her findings. Being part of the UNLV Law faculty, however, has given Johnson the freedom to talk about these issues that are important for lawyers (and students), and she says she enjoys that freedom. “I’m an academic. I’m sort of insulated from market pressures,” she says with a chuckle, “because I’m in a marketplace of ideas.”

That wasn’t always the case. Johnson was in the trenches of big-firm contract law for years in Chicago and Las Vegas before arriving at Boyd. So she’s poured over enough contracts to know there are instances when it’s prudent to streamline language. “I teach students to remove from contracts meaningless jargon that has plain-language equivalents. But ultimately, there exist certain unsimplifiable terms of art in contracts.”

Johnson says her areas of scholarship directly enhance another aspect of her professional enthusiasm: teaching aspiring and practicing lawyers to be the best advocates (and communicators) that they can be. To that end, she’s now a member of the editorial board of the Journal of the Legal Writing Institute, one of legal academia’s few peerreviewed journals.

While the discussion is scholarly, Johnson asserts that it’s directly applicable to work in the field. “I’m really passionate about it,” she says. “And I get to bring that [passion] into my classroom. I get to further the academic discourse in an area that is really important to me.”

“My mom’s work and the places I lived sort of explain how I got into this work.”

Addie Rolnick, UNLV Law associate professor FACULTY FOCUS

PROFILES

Untangling the Web PROFESSOR ADDIE ROLNICK WORKS TO RESOLVE THE LEGAL ISSUES THAT INTERCONNECT TRIBAL CRIMINAL LAW, JUVENILE JUSTICE, RACE AND GENDER

BY LAUNCE RAKE Growing up in New Mexico, Addie Rolnick didn’t have to go far to see how juvenile justice was applied to Native American communities. With her family often working and living next to those communities, she witnessed the impacts firsthand.

Now an associate professor at the UNLV William S. Boyd School of Law, Rolnick applies the insights she gleaned in her early years into her research and writing on the interrelated areas of tribal criminal law, juvenile justice, and race and gender issues.

She’s somewhat followed in the footsteps of her mother, who has worked on tribal issues as a legal aid attorney and tribal attorney in Oregon, New Mexico, Massachusetts, and Maine. “My mom’s work and the places I lived sort of explain how I got into this work,” she says.

Rolnick’s scholarship has consistently looked at issues of gender, race, and justice.

In 2016, she published a paper in the N.Y.U. Journal of Legislation and Public Policy titled “Untangling the Web: Juvenile Justice in Indian Country.”

“The article grew in part from work I did when I was a lawyer and lobbyist at Sonosky, Chambers, Sachse, Endreson & Perry in Washington, D.C.,” she says. “While there, I led a coalition of tribes lobbying

STUDENT PUTS SKILLS TO USE WITH NATIVE AMERICAN VILLAGE IN ALASKA Students at the UNLV William S. Boyd School of Law have access to some of the best and brightest legal professors in the country—professors who offer much more than just critical classroom instruction.

Just ask Kezziah Dale.

With a little help from UNLV Associate Professor Addie Rolnick, who has extensive real-

for better funding for tribal juvenile justice systems and a greater role for tribes in federal and state juvenile justice policy. … I also published a policy brief through the Campaign for Youth Justice, which at the time was one of the only documents focused on Native youth and juvenile justice.”

That work ultimately led to Rolnick working on policy with Congress, even testifying before the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs in 2014 “to provide general recommendations on improving juvenile justice for Native youth.”

Rolnick, who says her relationship with congressional policy makers is ongoing, also has made contributions to the National Girls Initiative, a project of the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention that’s focused on addressing policy shortfalls for girls in the juvenile justice system.

world experience with tribal law, Dale recently found herself in an Alaskan village as part of her 2017 practicum. The third-year UNLV Law student applied both the knowledge she gained in Boyd classrooms and the program management and presentation skills she acquired as an officer in the U.S. Air Force to assist a Native American Alaskan tribal community.

Dale’s work involved researching and drafting a comprehensive children’s law that covers procedures for when and how the village prevents or intervenes in cases where a child’s

Now she is the lead author on a report, due out this fall, that looks at those issues as they pertain to Native girls. “As far as I know, it will be the first report focused on Native girls in the juvenile justice system,” she says. “Some have been published on girls of color, but Native youth are either left out or are a very small part of such reports because their legal, political, social and historical circumstances are so different.”

Rolnick, who has worked on many sides of the juvenile justice equation over the last 20 years, says the biggest impediment to improving the situation of Native young people caught up in the criminal justice system is a lack of reliable information to study. “A lot of states just don’t collect [enough data],” she says. “We need more data on girls, period.

And we need more data on Native youth.”

Her big effort now is to continue her research and compile the information that is available into a forthcoming book. This is not just an academic exercise. Rolnick has worked to eliminate obstacles related to juvenile justice in Northern Nevada, Alaska and, more recently, South Dakota.

“You can’t improve what happens with those kids until you know what is happening, how it is happening,” Rolnick says. “It really is a black hole of knowledge.”

welfare is in question. Her work brought together existing community laws, as well as state and federal laws and regulations.

“In short, the comprehensive children’s code is a cradle-to-grave road map for the village regarding child safety and wellbeing issues,” Dale says. That might include investigating and responding with judicial oversight to reports of child abuse, neglect or abandonment, terminating parental rights or returning a child to their home following corrective actions.

After being recommended by Rolnick, Dale began working on the project in January 2017, traveling to the Alaskan village in April.

A second trip for a workshop is planned for spring 2018.

“The project provided new challenges for me,” says Dale, who is in her final year at UNLV Law. “One of the biggest gains was the opportunity to step outside my comfort zone. … This would not have been possible without Professor Rolnick’s background and leadership.” –Launce Rake 2017 | UNLV Law

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WHAT HAPPENS AT BOYD ... IN PICTURES

THE GALLERY

COMMENCEMENT

U.S. Senator Harry Reid (above) delivered the keynote address for the William S. Boyd School of Law’s 2017 commencement on May 12. Reid, who is UNLV Law’s first Distinguished Fellow in Law and Policy, spoke to 124 graduates, including Audra Jane Powell and Marckia L. Hayes (left).

For more on Reid’s life in law and new position at Boyd, see page 28.

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THE GALLERY

SENATOR REID INSTALLATION

UNLV President Len Jessup and William S. Boyd School of Law Dean Daniel W. Hamilton welcomed U.S. Senator Harry Reid— pictured below left with Nevada Governor Brian Sandoval—as the law school’s first Distinguished Fellow in Law and Policy on April 20 in the Thomas & Mack Moot Courtroom. In his role as a Distinguished Fellow, the longtime Senator and Majority Leader from Nevada will work with Boyd students and alumni; lecture and participate in classes; and pursue writing projects drawing on the resources of the Wiener-Rogers Law Library. Senator Reid’s new role at Boyd coincides with the creation of the MGM Resorts Public Policy Institute at UNLV, which Senator Reid will co-chair along with Speaker John Boehner.

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THE GALLERY

FAISS LECTURE

The UNLV William S. Boyd School of Law hosted its annual Robert D. Faiss Lecture on Gaming Law & Policy on April 18. This year’s lecture, which was titled The Entrepreneurial Spirt that Drives Innovation in Las Vegas, featured speaker Jan Jones Blackhurst, executive vice president of public policy and corporate responsibility for Caesars Entertainment and former mayor of Las Vegas.

COMMUNITY LAW DAY

More than 50 UNLV Law students and faculty, with the help of attorneys, paralegals, and legal assistants from the Legal Aid Center of Southern Nevada, came together on August 27, 2016, to help almost 400 Nevadans seal their criminal records. Several agencies and departments worked to expedite a traditionally lengthy and difficult process setting these individuals on a path to securing employment and beginning a new life. Above (from left), Boyd Professor of Law Elizabeth MacDowell, Legal Aid Center of Southern Nevada Executive Director Barbara Buckley, Boyd student Paige Foley, and Legal Aid Center paralegal Violeta Mendez speak with a client.

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THE GALLERY

SPRING FLING

UNLV Law students, alumni, family, and friends enjoyed an afternoon of fun and softball at the 8th Annual Spring Fling at the UNLV Eller Media Softball Stadium on April 27. The event included a softball tournament, barbecue, and family-friendly activities.

BARRISTERS BALL

Nevada Governor Brian Sandoval (center) joined UNLV Law students, family, and faculty at the Cleveland Clinic’s Keep Memory Alive Center on April 8 for the annual Barristers Ball. Presented by the William S. Boyd School of Law Student Bar Association Board of Governors, this formal year-end event celebrates another academic year filled with accomplishments.

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KEEPING UP WITH BOYD ALUMNI

CLASS ACTIONS

2002

UNLV LAW ALUMNI JUDGES

MEET THE LAWMAKERS The 79th session of the Nevada Legislature adjourned on June 6, 2017, having passed several key pieces of legislation sent to Governor Brian Sandoval for his signature.

Among the bills that were adopted were reformed adult guardianship laws, esports regulation, renewable energy programs, and brain-death guidelines.

The UNLV William S. Boyd School of Law would like to recognize and thank the following alumni who served the State of Nevada during this year’s session.

Catherine M. Mazzeo joined the 2017-18 Board of Governors of the State Bar of Nevada. She and others were officially sworn in at the Annual Meeting on June 29 in Austin, Texas.

2003 Sean Claggett was recently named “Trial Lawyer of the Year” by the Nevada Justice Association. Sean appears in the May/ June 2017 issue of the Association’s Advocate magazine where he credits his wife, Lou, for her unwavering support dating back to his time as a law student at Boyd. Sean currently serves as an adjunct professor at UNLV, where he teaches law practice management.

Elliot Anderson (JD ’15) State Assembly, District 15

Judge Sam Bateman (JD ’02) Justice of the Peace, Henderson

Judge Joe M. Bonaventure (JD ’01) Justice of the Peace, Las Vegas

Becky Harris (LLM ’16) State Senate, District 9 James Ohrenschall (JD ’09) State Assembly, District 12

Jan Kelly of Poulsbo, Wash., received the Lion of the Year Award for service to her community.

Keith Pickard (JD ’11) State Assembly, District 22

2006

In June 2017, Adam Woodrum began working as an Associate Attorney at the Reno office of Thorndal, Armstrong, Delk, Balkenbush & Eisinger in the field of civil defense.

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UNLV Law | 2017

Edgar Flores (JD ’12) State Assembly, District 28 Jason Frierson (JD ’01) State Assembly, District 8

2005

Tierra D. Jones has been appointed as judge in Department 10 of the Eighth Judicial District Court.

Nicole Cannizzaro (JD ’10) State Senate, District 6

Judge Cynthia Cruz (JD ’03) Justice of the Peace, Las Vegas Judge Linda Marquis (JD ’03) Eighth Judicial District Court, Family Division

Judge Tierra D. Jones (JD ’06) Eighth Judicial District Court

ALUMNI REMEMBERED We wish to recognize the William S. Boyd School of Law alumni who have passed since our last issue: Suzanne Hyte ’10 Janine Lee ’16 Marvin Longabaugh ’01

CLASS ACTIONS

2007 Michael Wendlberger returned to Nevada to take a position with Legal Aid Center of Southern Nevada as a guardianship attorney for protected persons.

Will Work for Judges BOYD GRADS SECURE COVETED JUDICIAL CLERKSHIPS AT AN IMPRESSIVELY HIGH RATE

BY ALEZA FREEMAN Hoping to land a judicial clerkship after graduation? You’ve come to the right place.

Nearly one-third of the UNLV William S. Boyd School of Law’s graduating class secure clerkships with judges in Nevada every year, making it one of the most robust and successful post-graduate judicial clerkship placement programs in the country.

Recent alums routinely clerk at the Eighth Judicial District Court in Clark County; the Second Judicial District Court in Washoe County; the Nevada Court of Appeals; the Supreme Court of Nevada; the U.S. District Court for the District of Nevada; and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

“We have our alumni clerking in positions at every level of the state and federal judiciary in Nevada,” says Rachael Reese Adair, who is UNLV Law’s director of career development. “Federal clerkships are

highly coveted nationally, so when our students or alumni secure these ‘unicorn positions,’ as I call them, it’s a wonderful success for the law school and our students.

“By clerking in the various Nevada state courts, our alumni are gaining incredible hands-on experience and directly impacting the development of Nevada law.”

Last fall, exactly one-third of UNLV’s 2016 graduating class—38 students in all—began clerking with judges in Nevada. Five of those graduates secured positions at the federal level, including two—Gil Kahn and Aarin Kevorkian—who are clerking with the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

Not only is the 33 percent clerkship rate among one of the highest in the country, but Law.com recently ranked UNLV No. 3 among all U.S. law schools for its state clerkship placements alone.

Additionally, Law.com ranks UNLV among the top 50 law schools (No. 40 overall) for highest percent of 2016 graduates who landed full-time, long-term employment in positions that require bar passage and aren’t funded by the schools themselves. More than 72 percent of the 2016 class were hired for such jobs, which are con-

sidered the most coveted and prestigious for first-year lawyers.

Overall, UNLV Law boasts a 92.2 percent employment rate for graduates—a number Adair is confident will continue to soar as the school strengthens its commitment to preparing students for judicial clerkships early in law school.

“The law school has taken the initiative to start educating students about post-graduate judicial clerkships during the first year of law school,” she says.

Adair adds that clerking comes with “numerous advantages”— most notably, learning from a seasoned judge and potentially gaining a lifelong mentor. Additionally, clerks get a chance to develop a perspective in the courtroom from a neutral decision-making vantage point while also learning from the successes and mistakes of attorneys appearing in court.

Finally, one can’t overstate how much a judicial clerkship position enhances the résumé of a budding attorney.

“Clerkships are recognized as valuable experience” by prospective employers, says UNLV Law Dean Daniel W. Hamilton. “When you work for a judge, the law comes alive.”

Earlier this year Homa (Sayyar) Woodrum was named Attorney for the Rights of Older Persons and Persons with Disabilities with the State of Nevada Aging and Disability Services Division in Carson City. The governor-appointed position includes service as the state’s Legal Assistance Developer.

2008 Bret Meich was recently named to Nevada’s 2017 Legal Elite by Nevada Business Magazine. Meich, an associate at the Reno office of Downey Brand, is one of 98 Northern Nevada attorneys to receive this year’s honor.

2009 Margo Chernysheva was elected as the 2017-18 chair for the Nevada Chapter of the American Immigration Lawyers Association.

She is the founding partner at MC Law Group in Las Vegas.

Holly E. Estes recently opened her own law practice, Estes Law, in Reno. Estes Law is a boutique firm focusing on business bankruptcy.

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CLASS ACTIONS

2010 Earlier this year Siria Gutierrez joined the Las Vegas law firm of Hall, Jaffe & Clayton, LLP, as an associate.

Jennifer Hostetler recently returned to the Las Vegas office of Lewis Roca Rothgerber Christie LLP following two years as Chief Deputy Attorney General for the Personnel Division of the Nevada Attorney General’s Office.

ALUMNI REUNION

On Nov. 5, the UNLV William S. Boyd School of Law alumni gathered at the Four Seasons Hotel for the annual class reunion and alumni dinner.

This year featured a special reception for the reunion classes of 2001, 2006 and 2011; a reception for all alumni; and an all Boyd dinner and awards program.

Steven Parke opened two new Las Vegas offices, located at 330 East Charleston Blvd. and 4455 Jones Blvd.

2011 In January 2017, Las Vegas resident Stephanie S. Buntin became a shareholder at the firm of Howard & Howard Attorneys PLLC. She focuses on domestic and foreign patent prosecution, trademark prosecution, and trademark clearance, policing and enforcement.

2013 Jeremy B. Duke is General Counsel for medical marijuana establishment CWNevada, LLC. Marisa Rodriguez was named an associate with Weinberg Wheeler Hudgins Gunn & Dial, a national litigation boutique firm. She was chosen as a 2017 Super Lawyers Mountain States Rising Star for her work in personal injury defense.

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From left: UNLV Law Dean Daniel W. Hamilton, Ogonna Brown ’01 (Distinguished Service Alumni Award), Brenda Weksler ’02 (Alumni Volunteer Leadership Award), Hillary Walsh ’12 (Young Alumni Award), Joe Cain ’01 (Alumnus of the Year), and Christopher Darden.

CLASS ACTIONS

Nicholas Shook now runs a Las Vegas-based marijuana operation called The Apothecary Shoppe.

2015 Rochelle A. HardingRoed joined the law firm of Claggett & Sykes in Las Vegas.

Prior to her career in the legal industry, she worked in business and construction quality control. During her time at Boyd, Harding-Roed was the treasure r of the Native American Law School Association, interned as a student attorney with the Special Public Defender’s Office, placed in the Client Counseling Competition, and received a CALI Award for her Capstone writing requirement.

Above: Daniel Martinez ’10, Maria Veronica Saladino ’17, and Elias George ’11 At left: Christopher Darden, Congresswoman Dina Titus, and Clark County District Attorney Steve Wolfson

2016 Jordan Hollander (LLM Gaming Law and Regulation) recently joined the New Jersey Department of Law and Public Safety, Division of Gaming Enforcement, as a Deputy Attorney General. He works in casino and employee licensing for casinos in Atlantic City.

Jason Onello recently opened Onello Law Group, PLLC, located at 3017 W. Charleston Boulevard in Las Vegas.

We want to hear from you. Email your Class Notes to: Carolyn.

Barnes@unlv.edu

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KEEPING UP WITH BOYD ALUMNI

CLASS ACTIONS

Betting on Boyd Pays Off CALIFORNIA NATIVE EMILY HAWS ROLLED THE DICE ON UNLV LAW AND WON BIG

BY PATRICK EVERSON Emily Haws grew up in California, and after securing her undergraduate degree from the University of Utah in 2013, law school was the next thing on her agenda. There was no shortage of options that would bring Haws back to her home state, which is what she thought she wanted.

Fast-forward four years, and Haws is now a proud alum of the UNLV William S. Boyd School of Law, Class of 2017.

So how did this California girl end up choosing UNLV over such institutions as the University of Southern California and UCLA? “That’s the No. 1 question I get,” Haws says from her home in Redlands, California. “But the better question is: Why did I actually stay at UNLV? After my first year, I thought I might transfer. My grades were good, and I was looking at USC and UCLA. But then I kind of evaluated that option. I would’ve missed out on [so many] opportunities at Boyd.”

Haws went on to list a host of things that UNLV Law afforded her, most notably a broadly based legal education that she now realizes she never would’ve received at a highprofile California institution.

“Those skills I got from Boyd are equally valuable in a bigger market, but I wouldn’t necessarily get those skills in a bigger-market school,” she says. “The Las Vegas community is full of resources and opportunities— there’s a smaller pool of applicants at Boyd for insanely good opportunities. It really is a treasure trove of opportunities.”

During her time at UNLV, Haws was editor-in-chief of the Nevada Law Journal, which is published by Boyd students. She also gained experience in moot court competitions and clinics, and was a teaching assistant for multiple UNLV Law professors.

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“Those things are kind of mutually exclusive at other law schools. You might get to do one of them,” Haws says. “At Boyd, you can do as much as you’re willing to commit to.”

And students who make those commitments find themselves much more prepared to put their law degree into actual legal practice.

“It was a lot of work, especially the last

two years, which were probably the hardest of my life,” says Haws, who graduated cum laude. “But it was extremely rewarding.

You just become a better lawyer faster.

“I was a summer associate at a law firm in Orange County, [California], and I already knew how to do a lot of what was required and was less afraid to jump in. That fear was gone. It was a skill I picked up, and was encouraged to pick up, in law school.

Maybe that’s part of the uniqueness of Boyd.”

In August, Haws began a one-year clerkship for Senior United States District Court Judge Kent Dawson, a federal judge in Las Vegas. “That’s an opportunity that, but for Boyd, I’d have never had,” she says. When the clerkship concludes, Haws plans to return to the Orange County firm where she was a summer associate to begin practicing in securities litigation.

Looking back at her four years in the desert, Haws can’t even begin to estimate how much UNLV Law prepared her for what promises to be a very bright future as an attorney.

“Let me count the ways, my goodness,” says Haws, who took the bar exam this summer in California. “More than anything, attending Boyd taught me that I can find a way to make things happen—those things that seem on the outer edge of attainability.

That mentality is cultivated in the Boyd community. Not people telling me no, but rather asking, ‘Why not say yes?’

“I’d have a very different legal career if I had gone anywhere else.”

H H H

H H H CLASS ACTIONS

Paying It Forward SEAN CLAGGETT PROUDLY SURROUNDS HIMSELF WITH FELLOW REBELS

BY PATRICK EVERSON If it were possible to buy stock in the UNLV William S. Boyd School of Law, Sean Claggett would be one of its biggest stakeholders. Claggett was a member of one of the first graduating classes, earning his degree in 2003, and since then, he has continued to support the school in numerous ways—most notably by investing in subsequent Boyd graduates at his law firm, Claggett & Sykes.

Claggett opened what was then known as Sean Claggett & Associates in 2005, and followed up by packing his roster with UNLV alums, including firm partners Will Sykes (Class of 2005) and Matt Granda (2012), attorneys Jennifer Morales (2003), Christian Augustin (2015), and Rochelle Harding-Roed (2015), and law clerks Noah Duran (2016) and Shannon Diaz (2017).

Suffice it to say, Claggett is a big buyer in what UNLV Law is selling.

And if you ask the veteran trial attorney to pinpoint exactly what it was at Boyd that set him on a path to a successful career, he’s quick with an answer.

“When I got out of Boyd, I could outwrite most attorneys in town,” Claggett says, specifically crediting Professor Jean Whitney for his legal-writing skills. “She was such an amazing professor. She taught you how to think, how to write and how to put it all together.

So when it was time to put it into practice, it seemed easy.

“I had success from a really young age.

That’s all UNLV. [Most of ] the attorneys in my office are Boyd graduates, because I know they can write.”

To be sure, there were several other Boyd faculty and staff members who shaped

Claggett’s career, including Jay Bybee, now a sitting judge on the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, and Bruce Markell, who was part of the original faculty at Boyd. But before Claggett could learn from such influential mentors, he needed someone to invest in him. That turned out to be his wife, Louella Claggett.

“When I started at Boyd, my wife and I had just gotten married, and we had one car,” Claggett recalls. “She’d drop me off at school, and she had to work all day to support us. The deal we made was that she’d

put me through law school, and I had to work as hard as possible. I studied nonstop. It paid off.”

Undoubtedly. Nominated by his peers, Claggett was named Trial Attorney of the Year for 2017 by the Nevada Justice Association. He credited that achievement to a work ethic further instilled in him during his law school days and, before that, his time as an undergrad at UNLV, where he earned a political science degree in 2000.

“The one thing I took away from UNLV is that as soon as you stop putting in the effort, people are going to pass you by. It forces you to continue to improve,” he says.

“The law changes, people change.

Think about how much our society has changed since 2003. I see so many attorneys passed by because they didn’t adapt.”

Claggett has adapted and then some, piling up continuing legaleducation credits, and, of course, giving back to his alma mater, which in 2010 named him Alumni of the Year. Now an adjunct professor at Boyd, his firm welcomes a student intern each semester from UNLV’s political science department. He’s later hired several of those interns as support staff.

As important as anything, Claggett has made community service a hallmark of his firm.

Among the numerous local charities that Claggett & Sykes support are Three Square food bank, the Nevada Partnership for Homeless Youth and HELP of Southern Nevada.

Indeed, since graduating, Claggett has certainly represented Boyd and the entire university well. But at 40 years old, he believes his best work is yet to come.

“I don’t feel anywhere close to my best. I know I’m going to learn new things in my next trial and every time I teach,” Claggett says, again deferring credit to UNLV. “I love the school, and I’m very appreciative of it. So if I have the opportunity, I’m gonna give that back to my students.”

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RECOGNIZING BOYD’S SUPPORTERS

DONORS

The law school is grateful to the following donors for supporting the school in Fiscal Year 2017 (July 1, 2016-June 30, 2017). *indicates Alumni Leadership Circle Member

$1,000,000+

• William S. Boyd & The Boyd Foundation

$250,000$999,999

• Edward M. Bernstein & Associates

$100,000$249,999

• Thomas & Mack Company and Thomas and Mack Families

$50,000$99,999

• Sam Lionel and Lexy Lionel & The Lionel Trust • Michael Sloan & Barbara Molasky Sloan

$25,000$49,999

• Anonymous Alumni Donor • Peter S. Christiansen • The E. L. Cord Foundation • Eglet Prince • Garman Turner Gordon LLP • Daniel Hamilton & Mary Ann Winkelmes 52

UNLV Law | 2017

• Michael Saltman & Sonja Saltman • Thomas A. Plein Foundation Ltd.

$10,000$24,999

• Lynnda Brown ’04 • Harris & Eliza Kempner Fund • Lewis Roca Rothgerber Christie LLP • Nevada Bar Foundation • *Rosa Solis Rainey ’01 & Dayne Rainey • John O’Reilly • Southern Nevada Association of Women Attorneys • State Bar of Nevada, Gaming Law Section • Strategic Analysis Research & Decisions

$5,000-$9,999

• *Richard Andrews ’13 • *Paola Armeni Androvandi ‘03 & Joe Androvandi • *Christian Augustin ’15 • Association of Corporate Counsel, Nevada Chapter • *Brian Blaylock ’12 & Anne Blaylock • *Alison Brasier ’07 • *Ogonna Brown ’01 • *Adam Bult ’04 • *E. Joe Cain ’01 &

Christina Cain • *Justin Carley ’06 • *Holly Cheong ’10 & Angelo Cheong • *Sean Claggett ’03 & Louella Claggett • *Zachary Conine ’13 & Layke Martin • *Aleem Dhalla ’16 • *Miles Dickson ’11 • *Kelly Dove ’07 & Ian Dove • *M. Daron Dorsey ’01 & The Honorable Jennifer Dorsey • The Honorable Lloyd George & LaPrele George • *Marjorie Hauf ’02 • *Jean-Paul Hendricks ’06 & Kara Hendricks ’01 • *Kirk Homeyer ’11 • *Brian Irvine ’01 • Adrian Karimi ’14 • *Matthew Knepper ’12 • Konami Gaming, Inc. • *Michael Lee ’06 • *Kfir Levy ’03 & Anne Marie Doucette ’01 • *Terry Moore ’01 & Stacey Allen • *Billie-Marie Morrison ’01 • *Jessica Murphy ’03 & *James Murphy ’03 • *Michael Paretti ‘15 • *Casey Perkins ’10 &

Robin Perkins • *Becky Pintar ’01 • *Robert Potter ’02 • Edward Quirk & Maria Quirk • Nancy Rapoport & Jeffrey Van Niel • *Terina Salerno ’01 & Victor Salerno • Kim Sinatra & Harry Hagerty • *Quinton Singleton ’07 • *Leon Symanski ’01 & Lisa Symanski • Station Casinos LLC • *Melissa Waite ’07 & Kendall Thacker • *Trevor Waite ’14 • *Ann Ward ’02 • Brenda Weksler ’02 • *Ryan Works ’04 & Kendelee Works ’05

$2,500-$4,999 • Caesars Entertainment Corporation • FC Management, LLC • Ellis Landau & Yvette Landau • McDonald Carano • Samuel McMullen & Mary Ellen McMullen • Snell & Wilmer, LLP

$1,000-$2,499 • The Honorable Shelley Berkley & Lawrence Lehrner • Boston Financial Data

Services • Barbara Buckley • Robert Correales & Julia Correales • De Castroverde Law Group • Dickinson Wright PLLC • Elaine P. Wynn and Family Foundation • Christie Golabowski • Hammer & Associates Ltd. • Holley Driggs Walch Fine Wray Puzey & Thompson • Legal Aid Center of Southern Nevada • Maier Gutierrez Ayon PLLC • Ajay Mehrotra • Richard Morgan & Tina Morgan • National Center for Responsible Gaming • Howard Siegel • Christine Smith • Doreen Spears Hartwell • Jeff Stempel and Ann McGinley • Steve Wolfson and Jackie Glass

$500-$999

• ACLU of Nevada Foundation Inc. • Rachel Anderson • Bailey Kennedy LLP • Constantinos

DONORS

Couccoullis & Alexia Couccoullis • Frank Durand & Veronica Durand • Gloria and Mark Fine Family Foundation • Leslie Griffin • Michael Kagan • Jenny Lee ’12 • The Honorable Peggy Leen • Lipson, Neilson, Cole, Seltzer & Garin PC • Thomas Main & Paula Main • Ngai Pindell • Jeanne Price • The Honorable Philip Pro & Dori Pro • Frank Schreck • Raymond Smith ’03 • UNLV Alumni Association • Valerie Wiener

$250-$499

• Rachael Adair & Luther Adair • Michelle Alarie ’10 • Sarig Armenian ’09 • Linda Berger • Jeremy Cooper ’08 • Desert Institute of Spine Care • Nicholas Fiorentino • Ruben Garcia & Victoria Carreon • The Jansen Family Trust • William Jansen & Nora

Jansen • Jetstream Construction Inc • Keating Law Group PC • Kay Kindred • Albert Kovacs • K. Michael Leavitt & Linda Leavitt • Annette Mann • Cliff W. Marcek P.C. • Boyd Moss ’03 • James Nance ’05 & Janie Nance • Priscilla O’Briant ’06 • Ogletree, Deakins, Nash, Smoak & Stewart P.C. • Keith Rowley & Katherine Rowley • Jean Sternlight • Marketa Trimble & Gary Trimble

$100-$249

• Wesley Ayres & Gaylelynne Ayres • Orrin Baisden • Ian Bartrum • Ina Bergstrom & Ryan Bergstrom • The Honorable Bonnie Bulla • Michael Burton ’13 • Byron Calos • Melissa Corral ’14 • Eighth Judicial District Court Judges • Linda Edwards & Dan Edwards

• Sally Galati ’05 & Craig Galati • Michael Gayan ’08 & Jennifer Gayan ’08 • Erin Gettel ’15 • Jacqueline Gilbert ’07 • Homero Gonzalez ’19 • Kimberly Goodnight ’06 & Joseph Goodnight • Elana Graham & Ben Graham • Matthew Granda ’12 • Christopher Horner ’08 • Darcy Johnson ’02 • Lori Johnson • Scott Katherman ’06 • David Korrey • Mark Lerner • Akke Levin ’04 & Ari Levin • Francine Lipman • Thomas McAffee • The Honorable Robert Miller & Sandra Miller • Joanna Myers ’10 • Nadia Jurani ’03 • National Lodging Renovation Management Inc. • Terrill Pollman • Jennifer Roberts • Mark Sakurada ’14 • David Sandino • Southwest Gas Corporation Foundation • Bernard Stallard

• Kelly Stout ’10 • Angie Traster & Joe Traster • Janet Traut ’01 • Travis N. Barrick & Jae Barrick ’13 • Adam Tully ’14 & Maria Tully • Jonathan Ullman & Joanne Ullman • Wright Finlay & Zak LLP • Steve Yeager & Bita Yeager

$1-$99

• Lisa Amsler • Elias Askins ’16 • Chelsea Baldwin • Peter Bayer • Mary Baylor • Christopher Blakesley & Susan Blakesley • Lane Blumenfeld • Kelly Boan & William Boan • Joel Brant • Marcy Brown • Heather Caliguire ’10 • Benjamin Edwards • Barbara Faiss • Erik Foley ’16 • Perry Friedman ’16 & Robyn Friedman • The Furnier Muzzo Group LLC • Caleen Johnson • Beverly Galloway

• Cheryl Grames ’12 • David Griego & Brenda Griego • Trevor Hartzell ’12 • Shari Iwaki ’07 • Kerry Kleiman ’15 • Ryan Krametbauer ’09 • Law Office of Stacy Weil • Lansford Levitt & Linda Levitt • Haley Lewis ’16 & Spencer Lewis • Benjamin Mankiewicz • Darryl Martin • Andrew Martineau • David Matheny ’02 & Nancy Matheny • Lydia Nussbaum • Brandi Planet ’09 • Shawnna Pomeroy • Alfredo Ramella & Lynn Ramella • Benjamin Reitz ’15 • Sandra Rodriguez • Tasha Schwikert ’15 • Norma Stewart • Thomas Stewart ’16 • David Tanenhaus & Virginia Tanenhaus • Brian Wall • Hillary Walsh ’12 & Shawn Walsh • Gerald Welt & Marcy Welt • Michael Wendlberger ’07 • Allison Wirth ’06 2017 | UNLV Law

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RECOGNIZING BOYD’S SUPPORTERS

DONORS

Serving the Community SNAWA OFFERS INVALUABLE ASSISTANCE TO FEMALE ATTORNEYS AND UNLV LAW

BY ALEZA FREEMAN Founded in 1979, the Southern Nevada Association of Women Attorneys [SNAWA] offers support, networking opportunities, and professional development to women in the local legal community. It’s a forum for female attorneys, law students, judges, and partners to exchange ideas and inspire change.

Since 1999, the organization has supported aspiring women attorneys by donating $126,000 in scholarships to students from the UNLV William S. Boyd School of Law. Winners are selected based on criteria set by the school.

“We are happy to support our state’s only law school,” says Diane Welch, SNAWA

“We are happy to support our state’s only law school. Boyd is such a great resource for the legal community here.”

Diane Welch SNAWA president and UNLV Law School alum

president and UNLV Law School alum (JD, 2009). “Boyd is such a great resource for the legal community here.”

Through the support of the law school and the community, “scholarship donations have increased significantly over the years,” she says. In addition to the scholarships, the SNAWA Foundation raises funds for three different local charities every year.

SNAWA recently celebrated its fifth-annual Justice Miriam Shearing Award Gala, a fundraising event that recognizes scholarship winners and pays tribute to a promi-

nent woman in the legal field.

This year’s celebration came full circle as it honored the organization’s first president, former U.S. Congresswoman Shelley Berkley, now CEO and senior provost of the Touro College and University System’s Western Division. SNAWA’s first-ever meeting nearly 40 years ago took place in Berkley’s home.

While SNAWA’s membership mostly consists of established lawyers and judges, the organization also continues to be an excellent resource for law students and recent graduates. Last year, women accounted for 44 percent of UNLV Law’s entering class.

“It’s important for new attorneys to plug in with more experienced attorneys,” says Welch, who acknowledges that a large number of SNAWA members are UNLV Law alumnae. “You begin to network, you get some mentorship, and it’s really beneficial.

“When you’re a new associate and just working like a dog in the firm, it’s hard to get that time out.”

DEAN’S SCHOLARSHIP INITIATIVE Scholarships strengthen the UNLV William S. Boyd School of Law by attracting and retaining top students, as well as reducing student debt upon graduation.

The law school appreciates the donors who generously provided the following scholarships awarded to Boyd students in 2017.

• Association of Corporate Counsel, Nevada Chapter Scholarship • Howard & Leontyna Babcock Scholarship • William S. Boyd Scholarship • Richard L. Brown Community Service Scholarship • Peter S. Christiansen Scholarship • Waldo De Castroverde Immigration Law Scholarship • Eglet Prince Scholarship • Gordon I. Fink Scholarship • Franny Forsman & Michael Pescetta Fellowship • Las Vegas Business Academy Scholarship • Las Vegas Chapter of the National Bar Association • Perry Friedman Scholarship • Noel Gage Scholarship 54

UNLV Law | 2017

• Leo Gibrich Trust Scholarship • Fred D. Gibson III Memorial Scholarship • Lawrence Ita Scholarship • Jackson Lewis Scholarship • Clifford A. Jones Sr. Law School Scholarship • Freddie Glusman Scholarship • Adrian Karimi First Generation Professional Scholarship • Charles H. McCrea Jr. Scholarship • Richard Morgan Chair in Law Scholarship • Barbara Williams-Rollings & Willard Rollings Scholarship • Southern Nevada Association of Women Attorneys Scholarship • State Bar of Nevada, Gaming Law Section Scholarship • William & Alberta Stern Scholarship • Thomas A. Plein Foundation Scholarship • Thomas & Mack Company Scholarship • Emilie Wanderer Scholarship

DONORS

Investing in the Future GAMING LAW SECTION OF THE STATE BAR OF NEVADA CONTINUES GENEROUS SUPPORT OF BOYD AND ITS STUDENTS

BY LAUNCE RAKE At a time when funding for state-run education institutions is stretched thinner than a legal pad, the philanthropic efforts of valued partners become all the more important. Enter the Gaming Law Section of the Nevada State Bar. For more than 16 years, the Gaming Law Section (GLS) has lent a helping hand to the UNLV William S. Boyd School of Law through donations earmarked for student scholarships. It started in 2001 when the GLS began organizing the Law Scholarship Golf Tournament, an annual event that raised more than $330,000 through 2011.

Since 2014, the GLS has funded an additional $55,000 in scholarships for students in UNLV Law’s LL.M. program for Gaming Law and Regulation.

More recently, the GLS has sponsored the Robert D. Faiss Lecture Series, the Frank A Schreck Gaming Moot Court Competition, and The Gaming Law Journal, as well as the Alumni Chapter’s golf tournament, scheduled for October 20 at Angel Park Golf Club.

“The mission statement for the Gaming Law Section is to further the education of the members of the State Bar of Nevada and the members of the judiciary in the unique area of gaming law,” says Jeffrey R. Rodefer, chairman of the GLS since 2000.

The Gaming Law Section of the State Bar of Nevada was initially formed in 1985, but went dormant in 1994. It was resurrected in 2000, when Rodefer was appointed chairman, bringing with him a wealth of gaming law experience in both the public and private sector. In addition to lengthy tenures with Golden Entertainment, Inc. and Boyd Gaming Corporation, Rodefer spent 13 years in the Nevada Attorney General’s office, including eight years as counsel to the Nevada Gaming Commission and Nevada State Gaming Control Board.

Today, Rodefer leads the 12-member GLS executive committee, overseeing an organization that has about 200 members, most of Photo: Brian Jones/Las Vegas News Bureau

whom are actively involved in the gaming industry, including lawyers working with various government entities, in-house corporate counsel and private practice. Rodefer adds that GLS membership also includes people “who joined because they think gaming law is interesting.”

Besides promoting gaming law education for both practicing attorneys and law students, the GLS also hosts annual conferences on issues of gaming and legal compliance.

One such gathering is the Gaming Law Conference, which for the past 16 years has been staged on the first Friday in November. The conference, which this year is set for November 3 at Red Rock Casino Resort, brings together gaming-industry regulators, lawyers and executives, as well as elected officials, members of the judiciary, accountants and compliance personnel.

Another key GLS-sponsored convention was the Bank Secrecy Act Conference, which took place from 2014-16 and featured federal regulators and gaming industry experts discussing critical issues facing the industry with respect to federal anti-money laundering compliance. In 2017, the GLS merged this conference with Casino Essentials’ annual National AML Conference, for which the GLS is the platinum sponsor through 2019.

Other ways the GLS has met the needs of the growing global gaming industry is through its publications. Most significantly, last year under the leadership of Vice Chairman Greg Giordano, the GLS published the Nevada Gaming Law Practice and Procedure Manual, a first-of-its-kind reference

book for areas common to the practice of gaming law. The GLS also will soon publish the second edition of the Nevada Gaming Law Index, initially published in 1999, that compiles case law and Nevada Attorney General opinions on gaming law and related areas. Additionally, the GLS each September produces the Nevada Gaming Lawyer, a magazine that features topical articles by regulators and leading gaming experts.

The relationship between the GLS and UNLV Law has been and will continue to be mutually beneficial. From the law school side, students remain the sole recipients of GLS-funded scholarships. In recent years, two students of the law school’s choosing were each awarded $5,000 scholarships.

However, the parameters will be changed for the next two years, allowing law school leadership to spread the $10,000 in annual scholarships across as many students as it chooses, so long as the money is divided equally.

“It is the law school’s sole discretion to determine how to award the funds the next two years,” Rodefer says.

As for how Boyd advances the cause of the GLS, Rodefer is quick to point out that, with gaming and law built into Nevada’s culture, the future pool of gaming-law specialists undoubtedly will include UNLV Law graduates.

“Our goal through our philanthropic work with the Boyd School of Law is to help [students] who are going to become the future generations of gaming lawyers,” Rodefer says. “It is an enjoyable relationship, and we hope it will continue to grow.”

2017 | UNLV Law

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DEAN’S COUNCIL Michael Bonner, Greenberg Traurig Judge Richard Boulware, U.S. District Court William S. Boyd, Boyd Gaming Joseph Brown, Kolesar & Leatham Ogonna Brown ’01, Holley Driggs Walch Fine Wray Puzey & Thompson Senator Richard Bryan, Fennemore Craig Barbara Buckley, Legal Aid Center of Southern Nevada Jennifer Carleton, Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck Senator Catherine Cortez Masto Timothy Dawson, Caesars Entertainment Corporation

Miles Dickson ’11, JABarrett Company Daron Dorsey ’01, Ainsworth Game Technology Robert Eglet, Eglet Prince Jason Frierson ’01, Clark County District Attorney’s Office Alex Fugazzi, Snell & Wilmer Thomas Gallagher, Thomas and Mary Gallagher Foundation Gerald Gordon, Garman Turner Gordon Brian Irvine ’01, Dickinson Wright Philip Kohn, Clark County Public Defender Samuel Lionel, Fennemore Craig Chief Judge Gloria Navarro, U.S. District

Court Michael Saltman, The Vista Group Ellen Schulhofer, Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck Jeff Silvestri, McDonald Carano Tom Thomas, Thomas & Mack Company Dan Waite, Lewis Roca Rothgerber Christie Melissa Waite ’07, Jolley Urga Woodbury & Little Brenda Weksler ’02, Federal Public Defender’s Office Steven Wolfson, Clark County District Attorney Kendelee Works ’05, Christiansen Law

ALUMNI LEADERSHIP CIRCLE The Alumni Leadership Circle is a group of dedicated alumni who have pledged a minimum of $5,000 in support of the UNLV William S. Boyd School of Law.

Richard Andrews ’13, US Navy Judge Advocate General’s Corps Paola Armeni ’03, Gentile Cristalli Miller Armeni Savarese Christian Augustin ’15, Claggett & Sykes Brian L. Blaylock ’12, Snell & Wilmer Alison Brasier ’07, Hicks & Brasier Ogonna Brown ’01, Holley Driggs Walch Fine Wray Puzey & Thompson Adam Bult ’04, Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck E. Joe Cain ’01, Fine Properties

Justin L. Carley ’06, Snell & Wilmer Holly E. Cheong ’10, Snell & Wilmer Sean K. Claggett ’03, Claggett & Sykes Zachary B. Conine ’13, Joseph Beare & Co. Aleem A. Dhalla ’16, Snell & Wilmer Miles Dickson ’11, JABarrett Company M. Daron Dorsey ’01, Ainsworth Game Technology Kelly Dove ’07, Snell & Wilmer Marjorie Hauf ’02, Ganz & Hauf Kara B. Hendricks ’01, Greenberg Traurig LLP Jean-Paul Hendricks ’06, Morris Law Group

Kirk Homeyer ’11, Fertitta Enterprises Brian Irvine ’01, Dickinson Wright Matthew I. Knepper ’12, Knepper & Clark LLC Michael B. Lee ’06, Michael B. Lee PC Kfir Levy ’03, Mayer Brown Terry A. Moore ’01, Marquis Aurbach Coffing Billie-Marie Morrison ’01, Craig P. Kenny & Associates James E. Murphy ’03, Laxalt & Nomura Jessica W. Murphy ’03, Clark County Public Defenders Office Michael Paretti ’15, Snell & Wilmer Casey G. Perkins ’10, Foran Glennon Palandech Ponzi & Rudloff Becky Pintar ’01, Pintar Albiston

Robert Potter ’02, Affordable Concepts Terina Salerno ’01, Salerno Law Group Quinton R. Singleton ’07, NYX Gaming Group Rosa Solis-Rainey ’01, Morris Law Group Leon Symanski ’01, Craig P. Kenny & Associates Melissa L. Waite ’07, Jolley Urga Woodbury & Little Trevor Waite ’14, Alverson Taylor Mortensen & Sanders Ann Ward ’02, Retired Brenda Weksler ’02, Federal Public Defender’s Office Kendelee L. Works ’05, Christiansen Law Ryan Works ’04, McDonald Carano

Francesca M. Resch ’12 Shannon Richards ’05 Quinton R. Singleton ’07 Amanda Stevens ’15 Marissa Temple ’04 Brenda Weksler ’02 Daniel W. Hamilton, Dean and Richard J. Morgan Professor of Law

Nakia Jackson-Hale, Executive Director of Alumni Relations and Special Events Lori D. Johnson, Faculty Liaison Carolyn Barnes, Director of Alumni Relations Stephanie Glantz, Student Liaison Alex Velto, Student Liaison

BOYD ALUMNI CHAPTER BOARD OF DIRECTORS Gabrielle H. Angle ’10 Christian Augustin ’15 Alison Brasier ’07 Lauren Calvert ’07 Andrew Coates ’15 Kelly Dove ’07 Jack Fleeman ’07 Erin Gettel ’15 56

UNLV Law | 2017

Amy Ismail ’13 Maggie Lambrose ’09 Brittany Llewellyn ’14 Amber Lunn ’16 Christopher J. Macchi ’14 Stacy Newman ’16 Jessica Perlick ’13 Chandler Pohl ’14

H H H

4TH ANNUAL

H H H

GOLF TOURNAMENT REGISTER NOW! FRIDAY, OCTOBER 20 Palm Course at Angel Park Golf Club

William S. Boyd School of Law

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UNLV Law | 2017

UNIVERSITY OF NEVADA, LAS VEGAS WILLIAM S. BOYD SCHOOL OF LAW 4505 S. MARYLAND PARKWAY BOX 451003 LAS VEGAS NV 89154-1003

SUPPORT THE DEAN’S SCHOLARSHIP INITIATIVE “I’ve known since I was a teenager that I wanted to become a lawyer to help those in need. The public interest work I do in the local community helps concentrate my goal toward becoming an advocate for those who cannot afford legal representation.”

Seleste Wyse, 3L Public Interest Fellow

Support scholarships today: law.unlv.edu/give

NON-PROFIT ORG. U.S. POSTAGE PAID LAS VEGAS, NV