Background

My interest is legal research and writing. I love my work and have decades of Nevada practice experience including a wide variety of legal issues in judicial, arbitration and administrative settings.

My relationship with Nevada began in my second year at the UCLA School of Law with a quarter-away clerkship at the Nevada Supreme Court. As part of my responsibilities as a research assistant to the Court’s Planning and Coordinating Office, I wrote an article published by the State Bar’s July 1976 Inter Alia – “Learning from the Past and Anticipating the Future: Nevada Focuses on the Judicial Council.” The Judicial Council became a reality in Nevada in early 1979 and is now responsible for a wide range of administrative matters from training judges and court staff to maintaining and disseminating a list of Nevada’s dreaded “vexation litigants.”

I returned to Nevada after graduation and began practice at Lionel Sawyer & Collins in 1977. Working frequently with Attorneys Paul Hejmanowski and Charles McCrea, I worked on cases involving Nevada’s most important businesses, gaming, real estate development, gold mining, health care and championship boxing.

I am married to Philip R. Byrnes, Senior Litigation Counsel for the City of Las Vegas City Attorney’s Office, Civil Division. We met at Lionel Sawyer & Collins where we were in neighboring offices and married in 1983. Phil is a graduate of the ASU School of Law. Phil and I do not watch UCLA/ASU sporting events in the same room.

I am rated AV in the Martindale-Hubbell Directory and have been listed in The Best Lawyers in America.

Education

  • University of California at Los Angeles, J.D., 1977, UCLA Law Review and Moot Court Team
  • University of California at Los Angeles, B.A., summa cum laude, 1968—Latin American Studies
  • Phi Beta Kappa honor society

Bar/Court Admissions

  • State Bar of Nevada
  • U.S. District Court, District of Nevada
  • Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals

Personal

I was born before dawn on Saturday, November 9, 1946, in Atlanta, Georgia, where my father was attending Georgia Tech after his war-time stint as a Navy pilot. My parents never let me forget that my arrival caused them to miss the Georgia Tech/Navy football game which the Yellow Jackets won 28 to 20. The family moved from Atlanta to Los Angeles where my father worked in flight test engineering at Douglas, McDonnell Douglas and Boeing.

My hobbies include dogs (largely rescues, including the very large rescue, Mr. Lucky, an American Staffordshire-Vizsla mix); reading (science fiction to Latin American politics and history), and gardening (generally futile attempts to make roses bloom in the desert).