Its Most Precious And Ever-Shrinking Resource

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  • Reno judge suspects Las Vegas Cozen O’Connor attorneys, Jan Tomasik and Daniel Mann, used AI with phony cases, quotes in their filing. [RGJ]
  • Judge Erika Ballou testifies, defends herself at judicial discipline hearing. [RJ; 8NewsNow]
  • Jewish student’s lawsuit against pro-Palestine groups, UNLV still pending after 15 months. [TNI]
  • ICE has a new courthouse tactic: get immigrants’ cases tossed and then arrest them outside. [Nevada Current]
  • Clark County specialty courts expand to cover children with fetal alcohol syndrome. [RJ]
  • RTC security company among 2 cited under new Nevada heat regulation. [RJ]
  • 5-time DUI offender could spend 3 years in prison for fatal hit-and-run. [8NewsNow]
  • Federal investigation launched into Las Vegas condo over nativity scene, menorah. [8NewsNow]
  • After heart attacking during NY bar exam, state board of bar examiners gathers info about incident. [ABA Journal]
  • Here’s your friendly reminder that CCSD starts school on Monday. After the tragic death at Arbor View earlier this year the community and school district undertaken efforts to improve student traffic safety. Let’s do our part to make sure traffic safety is a priority. Make sure you give yourself extra travel time and remember to observe school zone speed limits and that u-turns in school zones are illegal. [8NewsNow]
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Anonymous
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Anonymous
August 8, 2025 10:09 am

Can’t wait for my easy breezy morning commute to turn into a hellscape once more on Monday.

Anonymous
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Anonymous
August 8, 2025 10:10 am
Reply to  Anonymous

if you ain’t first, you’re last …..

Anonymous
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Anonymous
August 8, 2025 11:04 am
Reply to  Anonymous

Thanks for pointing this out! I did not realize school started this soon

Anonymous
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Anonymous
August 8, 2025 11:10 am
Reply to  Anonymous

But the silver lining is the return of the nooner. I have a “dentist appointment” on calendar midday Monday! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MAhCpAS2AwA

Anonymous
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Anonymous
August 8, 2025 11:53 am
Reply to  Anonymous

Don’t come home early. I’ll be fixing the plumbing at 11:00.

Anonymous
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Anonymous
August 8, 2025 12:15 pm
Reply to  Anonymous

We were planning on you joining us!

Anonymous
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Anonymous
August 8, 2025 1:00 pm
Reply to  Anonymous

Hahaha you win!

Anonymous
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Anonymous
August 8, 2025 10:22 am

Judge Albertson this morning advised parties to stop sending their Defaults to the Clerk’s Office because they are not getting issued and told parties to just upload the Defaults in her cases to her department so they can issue defaults. At least one of the judges is doing something about this outrageous backlog.

Anonymous
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Anonymous
August 8, 2025 10:58 am
Reply to  Anonymous

Doesn’t that run afoul of NRCP(b)(1) for sum certain defaults?

Anonymous
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Anonymous
August 8, 2025 1:52 pm
Reply to  Anonymous

(this is not legal advice) i would argue the same if my client wanted to overturn one of these defaults. doesn’t seem like a good idea to follow the court here

Anonymous
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Anonymous
August 9, 2025 10:16 am
Reply to  Anonymous

I have had this issue and the appellate court said that the Court’s plenary powers over the matter supersede the strict interpretation of Rule 55(a). (NRCP 55(b) is sum certain default judgments). Basically the Judge entering it was the equivalent of the Court acting as an elisor for the Clerk. This was happening when you would get the wrong clerk who did not like your affidavit of service or thought it was their role to act as a judge due their misunderstandings of Nevada law so you would need to have the judge take over.

The inability of the Clerk’s Office to file and stamp documents from summonses to writs is becoming a real problem, Kudos to Dept 11 for recognizing it and doing something about it.

Anonymous
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Anonymous
August 8, 2025 10:46 am

That Reno order is caliente

Anonymous
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Anonymous
August 8, 2025 11:10 am

Why in the everloving F is Ballou wearing a mask to her disciplinary hearing?

Anonymous
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Anonymous
August 8, 2025 11:12 am
Reply to  Anonymous

Zoom link please?

Anonymous
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Anonymous
August 8, 2025 11:16 am
Reply to  Anonymous

The hearing was yesterday. The photos in the attached RJ article are what is being referred to. Try and keep up, unless you are Boyd ’13, then you get a pass with merely an exasperated SMH.

Anonymous
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Anonymous
August 8, 2025 12:02 pm
Reply to  Anonymous

Boyd 13s always keep up and do not make such mistakes. You’ll find out the hard way.

Anonymous
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Anonymous
August 8, 2025 4:51 pm
Reply to  Anonymous

The mask. The lack of contrition. The cockiness. The best thing to do in such matters is to grovel and promise never to do it again. Anything else can be career suicide.

Anonymous
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Anonymous
August 11, 2025 11:00 am
Reply to  Anonymous

She wears one in court.

Anonymous
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Anonymous
August 8, 2025 11:20 am

Judges need to start to crack down on AI hallucinations. So many young and inexperienced attorneys are using AI but lack the ability to discern which case may be relevant or not-relevant. It’s causing a lot of extra work to oppose dumb stuff.

Anonymous
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Anonymous
August 8, 2025 11:36 am
Reply to  Anonymous

Honestly fraudulent AI case cites are a terrible ethical and practical problem. It means that you either failed to do a bare minimum analysis or intentionally cited falsity. I see attorneys who pull a brief from 10 years ago which has bad law. This is not great, but if its in an area they don’t practice for a routine matter and was good law and was drafted by reputable attorney i can see how this can get past scrutiny. How many of you shephardize brunzell or standard case cites every time you make that motion. But AI fraud is a known problem. Honestly, there needs to be more than a slap on the wrist. Especially for a big firm and attorneys who should be familiar with this.

Anonymous
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Anonymous
August 8, 2025 11:45 am
Reply to  Anonymous

Nevada Court of Appeals recently wrote in a recent case “We are somewhat troubled by real party in interest’s reference to Fountain v. Vega, which does not exist at 121 Nev. 865, 869 (2005). We rernind counsel to make certain cases are properly cited, particularly in the current environment where some parties rely on AI-generated research”

Slick Willy
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Slick Willy
August 8, 2025 11:55 am
Reply to  Anonymous

It’s embarrassing. Peak laziness. Really exposes the frauds.

ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, etc. is good at finding relevant NRS and NAC or municipal code. Outside of that, they are useless for legal research for the time being.

Lexis Protege is the only trustworthy AI source on that topic, since it’s a closed database that only relies on case law present on Lexis. No chance for hallucinations.

Anonymous
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Anonymous
August 8, 2025 1:12 pm
Reply to  Anonymous

“So many young and inexperienced attorneys”
Inexperience and youth is not a defense. You are supposed to learn how to cite check in law school. Never cite a case that you haven’t at least looked at the holding.

Anonymous
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Anonymous
August 11, 2025 4:48 pm
Reply to  Anonymous

It’s also a crazy generalization… most of us “young and inexperienced attorneys” know how to use the internet correctly and know ai well enough to know what it can’t do.

anonymous
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anonymous
August 8, 2025 1:20 pm
Reply to  Anonymous

One would think that in a $7 million case, a big law firm would at least have a law clerk spend a couple of hours cite-checking a brief, regardless of whether it was written by AI. But I guess one would be wrong. Wonder how much they charged the client for “research and writing?”

Anonymous
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Anonymous
August 8, 2025 1:28 pm
Reply to  Anonymous

I just wish I could stop being asked to attend sales pitches from AI companies that when I check the citations provided versus the file provided I discover they are completely wrong. Yes I would like a medical record summary, but I do not care how pretty it is if the citations are wrong. Save me from the Pretty Face trying to sell me on some tech bros minimum viable product that does not even do the bare minimum of what we need.

Look if your product “is not hallucinating” and “does not make things up” why is it telling me this medical record at this page contains something that appears nowhere on that page or even in that record. I’ve got the page up, I am looking at it right now. What it is claiming is here is not here. If its not a hallucination and its not making things up what bullshit tech term are you about to feed me to gaslight me into thinking that checking its work and finding issues is a me problem.

Anonymous
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Anonymous
August 8, 2025 8:34 pm
Reply to  Anonymous

This is all true and valid. Most Ai services are one size fits all. I do mostly med mal and most med chron services just simply don’t do what we want. It’ll be some time before a service can do what you describe.

Anonymous
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Anonymous
August 9, 2025 9:53 am
Reply to  Anonymous

Yes. Personally I have spent hours trying to learn the use and limits of it for fear of being dinosaured out sometime.
I find it very useful for paralegal level stuff (respectively) in organizing documents and trial notebooks when one has a massive amt of documents.
But it’s absolutely in no way better than having a working knowledge of key words and qualifiers in westlaw or lexis.

Anonymous
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Anonymous
August 12, 2025 2:36 pm
Reply to  Anonymous

NV Attorneys: Hey, AI is going to become big and problem with new attorneys. Attorneys will do the bare minimum analysis and will lack the ability to discern relevant and non-relevant case law.

NV SCOTUS: Here’s a solution! Let’s remove all essays from the Nevada Bar Exam!!

Anonymous
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Anonymous
August 12, 2025 2:44 pm
Reply to  Anonymous

New bar exam idea:

Keep the essays, but applicants are allowed to use the internet and AI. If you have any fake cases/quotes in your essay, you fail.

Anonymous
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Anonymous
August 12, 2025 3:15 pm
Reply to  Anonymous

I can’t tell if you are joking, but this isn’t a terrible idea.

Anonymous
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Anonymous
August 12, 2025 4:40 pm
Reply to  Anonymous

What is the Nevada Supreme Court of the United States?

Anonymous
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Anonymous
August 8, 2025 11:27 am

The Sigal Chattah law suit is… I don’t understand… complaining about speech they don’t like? Was there actually any intimidation? Any violence? Please help me understand.

Anonymous
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Anonymous
August 8, 2025 3:57 pm
Reply to  Anonymous

According to the article, plaintiffs’ counsel was changed from Chattah and Joey Gilbert to Chesnoff and Schofield. Quite a dramatic switch in the firepower of counsel

Anonymous
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Anonymous
August 8, 2025 4:33 pm
Reply to  Anonymous

Never heard of them. They appear to be criminal and family law attorneys… litigating a 14th amendment case.

Anonymous
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Anonymous
August 11, 2025 7:17 am
Reply to  Anonymous

You should become familiar with their names. First, they probably aren’t too far out of their depth in a con law case, but more importantly, they’re juiced, skilled, and aggressive. When you eventually wake up next to a dead hooker, consider calling Chesnoff.

Anonymous
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Anonymous
August 11, 2025 7:52 am
Reply to  Anonymous

4:33 here. As I am a woman, I don’t have much need for a dead sex worker, or any sex worker.

Anonymous
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Anonymous
August 11, 2025 8:29 am
Reply to  Anonymous

LOL.
‘Cause women can’t patronize sex workers.

Don’t knock it till ya try it.

Anonymous
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Anonymous
August 11, 2025 8:49 am
Reply to  Anonymous

Didn’t say I can’t. I just don’t need to.

Anonymous
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Anonymous
August 11, 2025 10:15 am
Reply to  Anonymous

While hiring sex workers likely increase the odds of waking up next to a dead hooker, not hiring them does not remove the possibility of waking up next to a dead hooker.

Anonymous
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Anonymous
August 11, 2025 11:17 am
Reply to  Anonymous

Or a pig’s head.

Anonymous
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Anonymous
August 11, 2025 11:44 am
Reply to  Anonymous

It was a horse.

Anonymous
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Anonymous
August 8, 2025 12:55 pm

Boyd apparently got rid of the Capstone requirements for a law degree – per the interns at the office – meaning that your newest summer associates may not have ever written anything longer than 500 words.

Hyperbole of course, but could we please just have some level of threshold for people to get a law license?

For those unaware, the capstone was a long legal research paper you had to write – like writing a law review article. Yes it’s sort of silly and all, but at the same time How many more hurdles are we going to take out of the process of becoming a lawyer until it just becomes one of those conveyor belt transports you get on at the airport?

Anonymous
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Anonymous
August 8, 2025 3:26 pm
Reply to  Anonymous

Although I was not required to write a Capstone paper due to my participation on journal and the associated note-writing requirement, I wrote one anyway. I was assigned an “advisor,” but that prof didn’t provide any guidance at all. The person wouldn’t even meet with me. They just checked off the credit as work they performed—but didn’t. I suspect there’s a lot of that.

Ultimately, I got support outside of Boyd and published my paper. In my experience, the full-time faculty at Boyd often exhibit a lack of commitment to teaching and mentorship. They’re obsessed with their own careers rather and don’t care all about students and the community. The arrogance is appalling—unless the problem is that they are unable to offer guidance. Many of them couldn’t practice and their law review articles are ridiculous.

Anonymous
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Anonymous
August 8, 2025 3:40 pm
Reply to  Anonymous

The capstone requirement in law school is a waste of time IMO. We likely all had to write final thesis papers in undergrad and the capstone at Boyd is essentially the same thing but law focused. Not a big deal in my opinion. Ability to write a good capstone is completely different than persuasive legal writing.

Anonymous
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Anonymous
August 8, 2025 4:16 pm
Reply to  Anonymous

I disagree. A long, thoughtful, in-depth paper on a prescient or niche legal topic can be valuable in that it shows competence and knowledge on that topic. Also, persuasive writing doesn’t have to be over-the-top and blatant (“clearly your honor, the company is just awful” is what I read frequently and it’s awful). The best persuasive legal writing in a lawsuit is similar to an objective legal think-piece: here’s the facts, here’s the law, this is why you should look at things my way.

Anonymous
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Anonymous
August 8, 2025 4:21 pm
Reply to  Anonymous

@3:40 PM I don’t disagree that the general tenor of the capstones is unfocused on the actual practice of law.

However, I will note that any form of legal research and writing – especially with a focused goal of some description – is better than none.

Anonymous
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Anonymous
August 9, 2025 9:49 am
Reply to  Anonymous

Thinking back on my time i felt like the capstone was a bit frivolous.
Thinking back it seems like it is a great practice for someone that actually has an interest in academia but agree more on the line of 421 suggesting thatanything that requires intensive concentration and legal type writing is macro a good thing considering the lack of threshold or apprenticeship.
With that precursor, my faculty
was completely disengaged in
the process although she did gladly use 85% of it for an article.

Anonymous
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Anonymous
August 9, 2025 1:06 pm
Reply to  Anonymous

This. The faculty at Boyd use student papers as a base for their own papers.

Anonymous
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Anonymous
August 9, 2025 2:53 pm
Reply to  Anonymous

So true. While we all “knew it,” it’s hilarious to see someone write it.

Anonymous
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Anonymous
August 9, 2025 5:47 pm
Reply to  Anonymous

I made the mistake of writing a full law review article for one of my Boyd classes on a topic my prof wasn’t interested in at first. Beforehand he was mad that I wasn’t doing his research for him on another topic and afterwards he was mad that he couldn’t write the article I wrote because I already wrote it.

Last edited 3 months ago by Anonymous
Anonymous
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Anonymous
August 8, 2025 5:18 pm
Reply to  Anonymous

“How many more hurdles are we going to take out of the process of becoming a lawyer”
100 question multiple choice on line bar exam. Race to the bottom.

Anonymous
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Anonymous
August 11, 2025 10:17 am
Reply to  Anonymous

Id assume it is harder to win best writing program awards if actual student writing exists showing how bad the writing quality actually is.

Anonymous
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Anonymous
August 11, 2025 11:04 am
Reply to  Anonymous

Is it “sort of silly”, or is it an important part of the process of becoming a lawyer?

Anonymous
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Anonymous
August 11, 2025 4:51 pm
Reply to  Anonymous

the capstone was in addition to three semesters of legal writing as recently as 3 years ago so this is wrong

Anonymous
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Anonymous
August 11, 2025 10:24 pm
Reply to  Anonymous

The legal writing professors at Boyd don’t know how to teach writing. They want “legal writing” to be taken as seriously as doctrinal classes (torts, crim, contracts, con law, etc), so they require one short-ish paper at the end of the semester like doctrinal classes have a long exam at the end. But that’s not how people learn how to write. People learn how to write by writing a lot and frequently. I guess Boyd profs don’t want to have to go through the hassle of actually giving feedback and reading student work through the semester.

Anonymous
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Anonymous
August 12, 2025 8:21 am
Reply to  Anonymous

I have trained several Boyd grads. Their highly touted legal writing program simultaneously irks and makes me laugh. I have worked directly with the actual products of this supposedly incredible program. If this program is so amazing, why do I, as a professional, have to do so much work to teach these kids basic competence?

Anonymous
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Anonymous
August 12, 2025 10:42 am
Reply to  Anonymous

The legal writing classes are really about the profs’ egos—the legal writing profs want to be treated like doctrinal profs—and that’s a good thing. But learning legal writing isn’t the same as learning in doctrinal classes, and shouldn’t be conducted the same way as a doctrinal class.

Anonymous
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Anonymous
August 8, 2025 3:39 pm

FBI SAC Spencer Evans, in charge of the Las Vegas Field Office, and a 21-year veteran, was just sacked. Why?

Because the DOJ issued covid instructions in 2021-22 and Evans followed them.

Anonymous
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Anonymous
August 8, 2025 4:32 pm
Reply to  Anonymous

Awful. So dumb.

Anonymous
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Anonymous
August 9, 2025 12:55 pm

Can someone please help with a procedural question because I’m still not used to the 2019 rule changes. Do you still add 3 days if you electronically serve written discovery? I read Rule 6(d) as the responding party gets a straight 30 days, not 33 like in the days of ol’. Just trying to verify. Thanks in advance.

Anonymous
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Anonymous
August 9, 2025 3:50 pm
Reply to  Anonymous

(d) Additional Time After Certain Kinds of Service.  When a party may or must act within a specified time after being served and service is made under Rule 5(b)(2)(C) (mail), (D) (leaving with the clerk), or (F) (other means consented to), 3 days are added after the period would otherwise expire under Rule 6(a).

3 days are only added for mailing, service through the clerk or alternative means. Service under NRCP 5(b)(2)(E) (“submitting it to the court’s electronic filing system, if established under the NEFCR, for electronic service under NEFCR 9 or sending it by other electronic means that the person consented to in writing) does not get an additional 3 days

Anonymous
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Anonymous
August 9, 2025 7:11 pm
Reply to  Anonymous

No.