COLUMN: Better Nevada's own than litigious transplants

Lawyers have become a hot issue in home-building circles. A whole raft of lawyers poled their way to Las Vegas from Southern California about five years ago, after litigation had forced many multifamily builders out of the business and the legal pickings became slim.

Since then, Southern Nevada home builders have suffered through many millions of dollars worth of lawsuits, forcing some companies to shut down and others to curtail their ventures in multifamily housing.

So, I wondered, what's going on with homegrown lawyers? I ventured out to the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, where I had an interesting chat with Richard J. Morgan, dean of the William S. Boyd School of Law.

The law school was approved by the Legislature in June 1997. That September, Morgan was brought in to get the school up and running. The first thing on the agenda was space, which is at a premium at UNLV. The university ponied up for the buildings at Tropicana Avenue and Swenson Street that once housed Paradise Elementary School, a sprawling campus of aging mid-1950s structures in an area that was deemed too busy for youngsters to attend. The pupils attending Paradise Elementary are in a beautiful new building on the UNLV campus where they have the advantage of extra attention from students in the university's education program.

Law school classes began in August 1998, 11 months after Morgan was named dean. The school has progressed so successfully, that it received provisional American Bar Association accreditation in July 2000 -- a record amount of time -- and is on the fast track to receive full accreditation.

"We have received tremendous community support, both locally and statewide," Morgan said. "Carol Harter (university president) has been terribly supportive."

Morgan said Harter has made the success of the law school a priority in her administration and is devoting a good deal of the university budget to forwarding that success.

The school has two programs: a three-year day program and a four-year night program. Morgan said the first class of students will be taking the bar exam this July. Of the more than 400 students in the charter class, almost 90 percent of them are from Southern Nevada.

Morgan said one of his proudest achievements is in the quality of professors he has been able to attract to the school. He thinks nothing about taking the biggest and the best from prestigious law schools nationwide to enhance the Boyd School of Law.

The mission of the law school is to become an excellent resource and asset for the community, not to carve out a specialty niche, according to Morgan.

"The students get a mix of theoretical and practical law," the dean said. "We are trying to become a general purpose school with students grounded in solid legal analysis."

That brings us to home building as it deals with attorneys.

Morgan said the school is setting up a dispute avoidance and resolution center where he hopes builders, buyers and homeowners associations can iron out their difficulties without the formal application of litigation.

The school is so new that it is open for grants and other types of funding, such as scholarships, upon which a home builder could hang the company name.

What it boils down to: The school is a fledgling. A new crop of attorneys will be hitting the streets running after taking the bar exam this summer. Better these attorneys, who are home-grown, than litigious transplants from San Diego.

Carmel Hopkins, real estate product manager for the Las Vegas Review-Journal and Las Vegas Sun, can be reached at 380-4574. Her e-mail address is Carmel_Hopkins@ lasvegasnewspapers.com. Snail mail is P.O. Box 70, Las Vegas, NV 89125.

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