- Quickdraw McLaw
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If you could change one thing about the way we practice law in Nevada, what would it be?
If You Could Change One Thing
- Law
- Posted on 4 years ago
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The nastiness and misrepresentations. Your reputation and soul is important. Don’t ruin it for 1 case or client.
The clients. Practicing law would be great if there were no clients.
No clients, no paying clients.
The Nevada Court of Appeals.awful.
Any suggestions for explaining to the district court that it should ignore a published-but-poorly-reasoned COA case?
Awful, expensive, and unnecessary.
Isn't that every Nevada Court of Appeals opinion? They use the same boiler plate language in various opinions. I thought COA opinions are unciteable.
Under the NRAP, they are not to be cited for ANY purpose except law of the case.
Not quite. Published decisions of the COA are citable as precedent. Unpublished dispositions of the COA are only citable for purposes of law of the case and to establish issue and claim preclusion. Unpublished dispositions of the Nevada Supreme Court issued on or after January 1, 2016, are citable for whatever persuasive value they have. Unpublished dispositions of the Nevada Supreme Court issued before January 1, 2016, are not citable as precedent.
2:22– I stand corrected and you are absolutely right about the CoA. In my head I knew the exception but also knew that published CoA decisions come around about as often as total solar eclipses.
Published Nevada Court of Appeals are as a rare as them applying the law to material facts of the case. Jerry Tao is sexy though.
Split the courts into Criminal and Civil, from trial court through supreme court. Some talented judges, like Bell (when he was on the bench) and Gonzalez, can do both. Most can't. If you really want to be good at something, focus on it. Makes elections easier, too. A PD running for civil would stand out as much as a civil attorney running for criminal.
I've been saying this for years. Other states successfully do this.
Absolutely support this. Have for years. It's the same reasoning as Family Court.
They did this and it was a disaster.
12:47, please define "they" and "this." Thanks.
Judges want a half civil docket for one reason. They need donations from civil attorneys and the plaintiff bar. If not for money they would nearly all do an easy ass criminal docket.
The incompetent judges. Family court practitioner here. Our judges are by and large an absolute nightmare. Even people you'd think were going to be good (long time family law attorneys before getting on the bench) are nightmares. It's just a shit show.
10:53– Certainly agree with your point about the Family Court Judges, in general.
But our paths diverge somewhat when you lump the ones who had a lot of Family Law experience in with the ones who had no experience in the area as practitioners, and essentially condemn them all as equally bad.
Yes, there have been new Family Court Judges who I thought would hit the ground running due to having experience as practitioners in the area, and they turned out to be real disappointments.
But that said, by and large, the ones who had extensive experience as practitioners turn out far better, as a whole, than those with minimal or zero experience in the area, but who felt that Family Court was an easier and less expensive seat to campaign for and to win than an RJC Civil or Criminal seat.
And these "zero experience" people are not limited to elections. A few people have been appointed to Family Court seats who never represented a client in Family Court.
Whether achieving their seat via election or appointment, a few of these zero experience people were quite bright and hard-working, kept their nose to the grindstone and became competent. But a far greater number of them felt that they were already great or they never would have been appointed or elected in the first place, and they thus fail to recognize, or address, their lack of sufficient acumen in the subject matter.
And their ass-kissing friends and supporters make it worse–"You're brilliant. You'll do great!", "How hard can it be? It's only Family Law.You don't need to study it. You could do it in your sleep. Just use your common sense. All you need to know it's what is good for children,and to be able to divide by two."
All of which raises another point. The only people who still insist that practicing Family Law is a mindless cake-walk, are attorneys who have never actually practiced in the area–or at least never dealt with a high asset case involving business entities, etc.
I agree w much of what 11:59 said. There are some decent judges in family court, but they are more the exception than the rule. I thought the long time family lawyers would be better family judges (Forsberg and Throne namely), but they've been disappointing thus far.
I would love UNLV to initiate a program whereby law students who have a desire to be a Family Court Judge in the future obtain additional years of education wherein they are trained in mental health issues and complex financial issues. Maybe two additional years of education focused on those subjects. Maybe only judges who have this training and pass the specialty exam would be qualified to run. Presently practicing attorneys who want to be judges in the future should have to go through this training as well, maybe through a night school program at UNLV. Expecting judges with their legal education to systematically make competent mental health and complex financial decisions is simply asking too much from most people. We are endlessly frustrated with judges decisions because their legal training did not prepare them for the job. I do not know of a single Family Law attorney practicing in Las Vegas that I believe excels at both the financial and the mental health issues. We seem to be more competent at one or the other. It doesn't help that practitioners in other fields always spout that Family Law is an inferior area of practice. It is a complex field requiring expert level knowledge in several areas and most of us are faking our way through some of it and skilled at other parts of it.
1:59, I take issue with none of your observations and suggestions, and in fact believe it to be an excellent discussion for you to suggest a sort of compulsory pre-judicial training, as opposed to merely being able to seek a judgeship based on being licensed for the ten year minimum.
But that all being acknowledged, I believe we have a far more basic and troubling problem that is much more pervasive and fundamental than judges hitting the bench with lack of sufficient training as to specific judicial dynamics, etc.
The more basic problem I allude to is that attorneys in general are poorly equipped for the immense responsibility of practicing law when they graduate law school and pass the bar exam.
Law School still emphasizes learning and regurgitation(rather than the sound application) of black letter law, at the expense of learning the practical and real-life aspects of determining how practical it is, and how likely is success, to proceed with a certain theory, a certain cause of action, etc.
And the attempts of certain law schools to claim they are one of those who are at the vanguard of addressing the practical, real-life elements of practice due to the school's "clinic" or "limited practice" availability often boarders on the ludicrous. Relative to the amount of time, and amount of credits, earned in more traditional instruction, the "clinic" experience offers, relatively speaking, very little.
Clinic, or supervised limited practice of law situations, are often not available till the third year, and then only on a very limited and narrow basis. So, despite the attempt to give students a small taste of the practical aspects of challenges they will encounter in practice, it usually fails even in this regard.
Now, that all said, there would be no real tragedy in all this if all practitioners recognized that they should work at a firm for the first five years or so, while they acquire the necessary skills, judgement, and analytical and discernment skills. But we all know egotistical and greedy jack asses who hung a shingle as soon as they were licensed, and the parade of horrors which ensued.
But, in fairness, I need to qualify my remarks or someone will post that they went to practice by themselves as soon as they got licensed and that they have probably earned more money than I will ever earn, etc.
So, the qualifier is that I am speaking of the majority of the cases where someone hangs a shingle right after passing the exam, or forms a partnership with they law school buddie who knows no more than they do.
Now, some who read my post will simply conclude that I lacked the guts or confidence to go out on my own real early in my career and/or that my law school sucked. That could be the case, but I still think my observation has merit that the average law school graduate is quite ill-equipped to be immediately tossed into the deep end of the pool as soon as he or she passes the Bar Exam.
2:37–I, for one, don't (necessarily)think you lacked guts and confidence because you apparently remained with a firm rather than going out on your own and hanging your shingle.
After all, as Dirty Harry said, "A man has got to know his limitations."
Or, to update the phrase so that the observation applies regardless of gender: "A man or woman has go to know their limitations."
I can think of several excellent lawyers, who work for larger firms, who should not go out on their own, and profess that they never intend to. Included in that batch are some excellent research and drafting attorneys, who might not be that effective at appearing in court, or at negotiating cases, or at interacting with clients, or at attracting new business, etc.
I want more Mark Dentons. Smart, fair, treat attorneys like human beings.
You forgot unable to make decisions.
Who trolls Mark Denton? The man is a saint.
Seriously. He rules according to the law while giving both sides a fair opportunity to make their case. His department is how all departments should be.
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Discovery. The games are such a huge waste of time. We have case law that says that boilerplate objections are improper. We have caselaw that says that "notwithstanding the foregoing objections,…." responses are improper. If judges got serious and starting sanctioning people when they respond with this BS, the process would be so much better.
Agreed. It would be nice if judges started getting serious about discovery abuses as well. Some discovery is such BS and clearly designed to increase costs. Would be nice for a judge once in a while to say no to that crap as well.
What is the case about "notwithstanding the foregoing objections…"
Problem is: Not supposed to make boilerplate objections, however, if fail to make an objection is is waived. Places the party and counsel in a catch 22 situation.
For me, the preferred practice would be allowing the boilerplate objections as a prelude to the responses and make the responses subject to the objections at time of trial. Such a process limits the boilerplate to a single paragraph before the responses and doesn't clutter up the responses with a paragraph to each question.
"Notwithstanding the foregoing objections" is usually followed by an INCOMPLETE response. It is a tool used to avoid providing a full and complete answer.
I'll second the question, what case disallows "Notwithstanding …"?
https://www.compellingdiscovery.com/?p=4288
I think I agree with this post. You either have specific objections that you state and ride with, or you don't. You can't have it both ways. This stating them so I don't waive them is rubbish, but it has become the practice due to the Court's allowing it to.
This. It is perfectly fine to explain why you did what you did, but the issue is when you just throw a bunch of garbage objections then answer, the requesting party has no idea if there actually is more that is not being produced or if your motions are just you going through the motions.
If you want to know my opinion on this issue, then please see my NRCP 16.1 production and all supplements thereto.
"notwithstanding the foregoing objections…" would be a very polite way to begin an objection to posts here…
Dirtier bar: Family or Probate?
Distinction without much of a meaningful difference. Probate is still family law, only involving at least one dead person.
I thought the reason to go into probate law was the easy money living off the elderly and disabled? Who hasn't heard the stories? Family law is draining. Probate is enriching.
8:41, You thought wrong re: probate law. Probate is no picnic under a money tree, I can tell ya. And a few bad apples don't spoil the whole bunch.
Attorneys need to learn dense writing. Too much prose. See above posts.
Writing with clarity and density takes time and effort.