Nevada on verge of having first home-grown attorneys

Jeffrey Libby

Tuesday, Dec. 12, 2000 | 11:16 a.m.

Grad facts

Ever since lawyers set up shop to settle claim disputes during the first years of Nevada's statehood in the 1860s silver rush, they have practiced with law degrees earned out of state.

But that will soon change. When 24-year-old Nadia von Magdenko marches in graduation ceremonies Sunday, she will be one of the first five Nevadans to walk off the UNLV campus toting a home-grown law degree.

For von Magdenko, a first-generation American and lifelong Las Vegan, her trip across the stage at the Thomas & Mack Center will be the fulfillment of a story she and her older brother told each other growing up on Alta Drive -- that he would be a doctor and she would be a lawyer.

For UNLV's Boyd Law School, von Magdenko's success will represent one less burden of proof separating the institution from hard accreditation. And it will also mark the near-fruition of plans for a state law school first proposed in the Nevada Legislature in 1973.

In July 2001 when von Magdenko and the charter class of 85 other expected graduates sit down to take state bar exams with the rest of the nation's graduates, they will need better-than-average test scores to keep the law school on track with accrediters.

If they achieve that, as Dean Richard Morgan recently predicted from his office at the old Paradise Elementary School, the provisional accreditation granted in July will be all but finalized.

The only remaining obstacle will be to move into permanent facilities at the James Dickinson Library on the UNLV campus. A formal application for full accreditation is planned for summer 2002.

UNLV can then claim without doubt that it has successfully joined ranks with the rest of the Lower 48 by establishing its own law school. Alaska is the only state without a law school.

"It's the first sign of the culmination of what is becoming a great law school," said Morgan. "It's a wonderful symbol, of course, and we're looking forward even more to the May graduation."

In May the remaining 81 charter students should graduate in the regular three-year period.

Von Magdenko and four other students took more intensive summer loads in order to graduate a semester early.

"It just wasn't enough work for me," said von Magdenko, who plans to travel, read German novels in the original and study additional class texts between now and the ABA boards in July. "I would get bored," she said.

In December 1997 von Magdenko submitted one of the first of 450 applications for enrollment at Boyd Law School. A May graduate from UNLV with a major in psychology and a minor in philosophy, she was the first of 140 applicants to accept the school's offer to enroll.

The average age of those 140 law students was 31, and about 90 percent were Nevadans.

Though the school could not guarantee that first class of students that it would be accredited, Morgan credits a strong faculty for the early approval ratings from accrediters. Von Magdenko says Morgan gave her the confidence to lay down $7,000 for the first year's tuition at an unaccredited school.

The law school emphasizes professionalism and community service, Morgan said, "with the notion that lawyers are problem-solvers and dispute avoiders."

UNLV President Carol Harter said she sees the law school "meshing perfectly" with her 10-year plan to develop more graduate and advanced programs at the university.

Keith Schwer, director of economic research at UNLV and the author of the 1990 and 1996 law school feasibility studies presented to the Legislature, envisions the school and its graduates drafting new laws specific to the needs of the state.

"There are some very unique issues to the state and the region. And without people dealing with them and working on them, we're not keeping up," Schwer said. "Gaming for one. Water for another. These are the issues that merit research and that ongoing type of work."

Gloria Sturman, a local attorney and the vice president of the Nevada State Bar, agrees with Schwer. But just as important to her is the law school's offering of part-time and night programs to "meet the needs of people with families who live and work here and who couldn't leave to go away to law school."

Roughly 55 students enrolled in those programs could graduate as early as next summer.

For von Magdenko, who plans to go into probate law and estate planning after the state exams in July, her degree will allow her to work at a more direct level -- with people.

But over the winter, between her other activities, she will work on a paper for publication that argues health maintenance organizations should not be immune from lawsuits, an issue with national implications.

"The plan is to change the courts', the commentators' and lawyers' thinking on HMOs' immunity and liability as it relates to ERISA (Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974)," she said. "This is serious. This is someone's life we're talking about."