Feature Photography by BRYAN HAINER
Sponsored By Nevada State Bank
Attorneys play a critical role in shaping Nevada businesses. As the Silver State continues to expand, law firm leadership faces a dual challenge. They must integrate artificial intelligence tools while also managing workforce pressures from seasoned talent retention, support staff shortages and a changing legal landscape.
Recently, legal executives met at a monthly roundtable to discuss the evolving business model of law firms, AI and succession planning, among other concerns. Connie Brennan, publisher and CEO of Nevada Business Magazine, served as moderator for the event which was sponsored by Nevada State Bank and held at their corporate office in Las Vegas.
MIKE BONNER: The biggest issue I think we grapple with—there’s a lot of them—is certainly how to figure out how to properly integrate AI, how to make sure the lawyers are doing the right thing in terms of training and trying to figure out what it’s going to do for our growth plans as a firm, both here and internationally.
STEPHANIE GLANTZ: The biggest challenge I see facing attorneys in our industry, and I know this is something that has been brought up in the past and continues to be one of the challenges, is having enough quality attorneys to supply the demand that our market has for good quality attorneys.
SARAH FERGUSON: I think that the most [challenging], other than the issue that Stephanie just raised, is how do we evolve the business model of large law firms to accommodate our clients’ needs and to address their expectations when it comes to pricing and performance and work quality? All of those other considerations that come into this business model that’s been in existence for so long, maybe, need some evolution to sort of integrate into a modern-day market.
LEAH CHAN GRINVALD: My challenge is sort of the reverse, being the supplier of new attorneys for Nevada and our neighboring states. How do we educate our students to be ready for the new practice of law? That’s also about AI. That’s also about the skill-building. It’s also about staying in Nevada, maybe going back up north if they came from up north. All those things.
LEON MEAD: AI is a big one, especially for a small firm like me. How am I going to use it? When do I use it appropriately? How do I stay out of trouble with it? [Another is] finding people, lawyers who want to join a small firm as opposed to a large one, and provide the right kind of service, and training for those folks. That is a big deal.
ELLEN SCHULHOFER: What comes to mind for me is more along what Sarah said: meeting client expectations when they are telling you that they got the answer from AI. Integrating that into the practice—some practices, like M&A (mergers and acquisitions), [are] using it more than maybe corporate governance, because governance is much more about giving counseling and advice. Everybody’s at different levels of use and trying to figure out how to use it in a responsible and ethical way. But there’s also getting attorneys in the door that are qualified, and retention without having to break the bank. You have to remain profitable in this day and age. Greenberg’s a national firm and has maybe more resources than Mead does, and so you’re competing. You have to get them in the door, and then you have to have a proposition that keeps them in the door.
CHELSIE ADAMS: The biggest challenge is how do we evolve to meet the needs of our clients as their businesses are rapidly evolving and changing and have more multidisciplinary needs? As they’re demanding increased technological demands and alternative fee structures? Being able to think about these issues in a sophisticated way and quickly pivot to meet the evolving needs of our client base [is critical].
GEORGE OGILVIE: Our biggest challenge is succession planning. We’ve got some legacy practices that have preeminent lawyers in the state, and we have a great group of younger lawyers. We have 10 lawyers from Boyd and looking to make offers to two of your rising 2Ls right now. But getting them in a position to take over those practices of the partners who are in their mid-60s to early 70s is a challenge.
*Editor’s Note: This article uses standard law school classifications: 1L (first-year) and 2L (second-year) Juris Doctor students.
SCHULHOFER: Well, let’s all agree there’s no work-life balance. It doesn’t exist, for starters. Not in my world. There’s more women in leadership, at least that I see in our firm. There are plenty of women and men who want to spend more time with their kids or might go on a part-time schedule temporarily for six months. Thirty years ago, I took maybe six weeks, but I think it was a month. The morning after I gave birth, Terry Jones was sitting by my bedside with a notepad. That would not happen today. If you have talent that you want to keep, you have to be willing to accommodate alternate schedules and allow people to work from home. We require everybody to be in [the office] at least three days a week, but then we have exceptions because there are people who need accommodation. That’s the way you keep talent. Once you’ve put years and years of training into people, you don’t want to lose them because they can work remotely for a national firm or another firm in town.
GLANTZ: You’re seeing a lot of attorneys on billboards in a particular (personal injury) industry. None of us practice plaintiff’s work; we’re all in different industries. On the defense side of it, we see a lot of people jump to the plaintiff side, and that’s where we lose a lot of our quality lawyers. When you don’t have the supply on the defense side, or in the M&A market, or in the construction market for attorneys, the only thing you can do to make the best use of your resources is to raise your rates. That affects the clients at the end of the day. It’s a problem for us in this room, [and] it’s really a problem for all of Nevada.
BONNER: In our local market, like Las Vegas, you get to know the better lawyers in town. There’s areas of practice that we just don’t touch. We don’t do claimant PI (personal injury) work. We typically receive personal reach-outs from people. There’s a significant headhunter industry out there that frankly doesn’t do a really good job with our market. They don’t understand our market, so we see lots of headhunter referrals that are not good matches for us. The other thing that we can do, given the size of our firm, is that when our recruiting people in another office have a candidate indicate a possible interest in a move to a different kind of market, [make them] aware that Las Vegas generally has a lower cost of living, a better quality-of-life environment and it’s easy to commute to work. We utilize that network. It’s a head-knocking experience to try and find the right people that are a good match. We used to make fun of millennials all the time; they’re getting older now, and they’re becoming very excellent lawyers and good people. The whole work-from-home thing is generational. We’ve had a pretty good success rate of getting people back in the office, but we’re also not rigid. If people want to do three days in, two days out, or four days in, we try to be flexible. We have offered a couple of people who wanted to do full-time remote the ability to do it because they’re really fine lawyers and we want them to stick around.
GLANTZ: My firm is somewhat unique in that we all work with each other across markets, and our practice spans nationwide, even in states that we don’t necessarily have offices in. A lot of us are barred in multiple jurisdictions and do practice in multiple jurisdictions.
ADAMS: We’ve had a lot of success in having really intentional events. Our firm retreats are a huge opportunity to not only connect with one another, but ultimately have shared work, clients and opportunities to build your book. Our internal referral network is a huge source of possibility for our attorneys, especially young attorneys. Having practice group meetings across offices to connect—albeit we’re Brady Bunch faces on the Zoom screen—the shared culture is such that I can pick up the phone, call any of our attorneys at any office, and have a friendly voice on the line and a trusted attorney I can count on to deliver the quality of service our clients demand. Our clients see it as a huge bonus that not only are their needs met with local expertise in Nevada, but when they have a deal in Arizona, in California, or in the Pacific Northwest, they have a Fennemore attorney they can trust.
OGILVIE: With the newbies, they come in pretty much on their own because they want to learn. They understand that they have to develop their skill set, and they’re not going to do that sitting in their pajamas at home. McDonald Carano is a little bit fortunate in that we’re a smaller firm—we have 55 to 60 lawyers. It’s easier to maintain and convey culture when you have a smaller group.
FERGUSON: Yes, absolutely, especially up north. It’s the same issue with paralegals in particular and legal assistants as well. You want somebody who’s had training, who understands the world in which they’re going to be inserted, and understands the demands of working at a law firm. That’s where we see the rubber hitting the road with new support staff. They come in and they’re like, “Oh, law firms are stressful.” Yes, they are! It’s very hard to find support staff who are ready to go. The ones that we have are absolutely tremendous, and I wish I could clone them all, but we could use some more.
OGILVIE: Particularly in Reno, there is a dearth of competent legal assistants and paralegals. A lot have come over from the Bay Area, and they’re used to being paid probably 50% more than what we’re willing to pay here in Nevada. Las Vegas is a little bit easier, but it’s still a challenge no matter who you are. Retaining them is the key, and it’s a matter of being accommodating, flexible and increasing compensation.
MEAD: The ratio of assistants to lawyers is getting smaller and smaller. One of the big things I’m trying to do is automate a lot more stuff in my small firm. There are certain programs out there that will do everything, including file your documents and bill straight ahead. If I file a motion in district court now, the system will automatically file it, get it out for service, bill the filing fee and docket it all at once. Why do I need an assistant to do something like that? There are lots of things I need an assistant to do, but you don’t need the traditional somebody who you turn it over to for that. This system converts it to a PDF, files it in district court, dockets the hearing date and bills it to your client.
MEAD: I’ve just recently really thrown myself into looking into the AI process. Most of it isn’t really even AI; it’s just a wrap being sold that way. But especially for my clients who are construction-related, AI is everywhere in construction. Have our laws kept up with it? If you buy a new computer, it actually doesn’t store anything on your machine; it’s all in the cloud at some data center. From an evidentiary standpoint, I have to have somebody testify about custody and control in order to get it into evidence. Can I do that anymore? There’s decisions where courts have been dealing with AI, and it’s all over the map. I have nightly backups that log every keystroke into a place to prove I touched it every step of the way. AI fabricating case law is very common. It’s all in how you draft the prompt. If you say, “I need a case that says X,” it’ll invent one. If you say, “Find me the case published by the Nevada Supreme Court that says this,” it will come back with real cases. When I first started, I had a huge file of emails and said, “Read all these emails and tell me what’s in it.” It doesn’t do it; it extrapolates. It takes every hundred and says, “Based on this, there are 2,500 that say this and 3,500 that say that.” I went and looked at them, and they were very wrong.
ADAMS: You can instantly see when a client email is generated by ChatGPT. It has the bullet points, the em dashes, and all the telltale signs. You have to go into a client meeting anticipating that they ran all this through ChatGPT and still decided they need a lawyer. ChatGPT is an incredible tool, but it’s never going to replace the judgment, advocacy and strategy that an attorney can provide. The victors in the AI race are going to be those who learn how to use it as a tool, because it is going to open us up to be better at client service, responsiveness and getting to know our clients’ businesses. All of those repetitive tasks won’t be a burden, so that we can do the high-level processes that only a trained attorney can do.
MEAD: There was one case out of Illinois where they had run a privilege search through 18,000 emails using an open-source AI system. It was open to the public; no attorney had checked and verified what it was producing. The court said all of this is going to get produced because you haven’t done this right. If lawyers use it like a tool, it’s all going to be fine. But if it becomes an associate in your office that you just file stuff from, you’ve got trouble.
SCHULHOFER: On the transactional side, where it’s helpful is if you need a summary of a 200-page agreement. You can feed in your structure, this chart, and say populate. Sometimes it takes three or four times of revising your prompt, so you get what you want. You still have to check it, because 90% might be right or 50% might be right, but that might have taken an associate 15 hours and it takes AI 10 minutes. That’s where it gets tricky with clients, because they want everything faster—everything in two minutes. And then they want to know if you are using AI and what you used it for. I’ve had general counsels say, “Well, I’m proficient in AI, so I’ll do it.” Good, go for it!
GRINVALD: The challenge for us in law school is to teach the students how to use it properly as a tool. We rolled out a brand-new required class for our first-year students to learn how to use AI properly and ethically. It can help you save time, but it doesn’t substitute reading, analyzing and understanding. At UNLV, we’re just getting access to Claude, for example, and that’s going to roll down to everyone. What’s to stop a 1L from uploading the cases they need to read to summarize it? It may pull out a rule that isn’t really the holding. We’re countering that with education.
GRINVALD: Nevada has been on the forefront of a new structure for attorney licensing, called the Nevada Plan. We can rest more sure that how we’re testing our students and newcomers to Nevada is in a way that actually shows they are more ready for practice than just a standard bar exam. It is broken down into three different parts. The first part is foundational legal knowledge: a traditional multiple-choice exam testing foundational law like contracts, criminal law, evidence and civil procedure. Then there is supervised practice, where a licensed attorney takes a case from one of our legal aid organizations and has a student seconded to them to work the case for at least 40 hours. That is brand new—no other state requires this. Finally, after graduation, they have a capstone exam of advanced essays with a closed case file where they are required to produce an assignment, whether that’s a memo or a motion to dismiss, that mirrors what they’ll be doing as new attorneys. Two out of the three requirements—the foundational FLE (Foundational Law Exam) and the supervised practice—can be completed in their second year of law school. They can fulfill two requirements before they even graduate. We had the first FLE given in May: 17 students took the exam, and 15 passed.
MEAD: Some of the verdicts that come down have a negative effect on the business side of things. You see some billion-dollar verdicts against companies that are just massive. You wonder, “Is this really helping us from an insurance standpoint and the standpoint of business itself?” Some of these huge punitive damage verdicts are just unbelievable, and I could see some caps on those kinds of things. Because we have a biennial legislative session, it’s really hard to get the legislature to focus on the real needs in those 120 days. If you aren’t advocating the moment the session ends so that you can get a bill done two years later, it’s pretty tough.
ADAMS: We are responding to some of the issues. The business court reform is much needed, and I’m glad the commission is making progress there. That’s great news for our clients. Our statutes have long been favorable to business; now we need a judiciary that is. The state is pivoting and making the necessary reforms to make sure that we can quickly adjudicate business cases.
MEAD: Arbitration was sold to me in law school years ago as faster, better and cheaper. That is not true remotely—not even close. Arbitration nowadays takes just as long and costs even more than trial because you have to pay the judges. In a million-dollar case, you file with the AAA (American Arbitration Association), and it costs you $10,000 upfront just for the filing fee. There is also a gap between $15,000 and about $100,000 where it is really difficult to economically handle a case. People call me with a $40,000 kitchen remodel problem against a contractor who left them stranded. They get a $4,000 lien, and you can’t litigate that economically. Even taking it to judicial arbitration, if there’s a $5,000 mechanic’s lien, they can’t adjudicate that lien process. Every dime you spend on a lawyer is a dime you can’t use to resolve the case.
OGILVIE: Back in the ’80s, when arbitration was supposed to be the silver bullet for businesses to efficiently resolve disputes, they didn’t anticipate that you would have full-blown discovery and that it would take nearly as long as it does. It’s more expensive, can take longer, and is certainly no more efficient. I will say this about arbitration, though: with the ability to choose arbitrators, you’re in a position to select a trier of fact who has experience in the area. We pick construction lawyers as neutrals, so they know what you’re talking about. Whereas if you go to district court, you have no idea what the experience level of the judge is. You might have a judge who has no understanding of your practice area. That’s one benefit, but every other part of the bill of goods the bar was sold in the ’80s about arbitration has been denied.
FERGUSON: We need more qualified judges in this state. We need more people who have experience in a variety of industries, who have sophisticated business experience, so that they speak the language and have a baseline of understanding. We do have some phenomenal judges in this state, but we could certainly use more.
MEAD: They tried to do appointed and then retention elections. When Judge Maupin was going around trying to get that passed, I thought that was well worthwhile. It is really hard to know. Some of these judges that run have gone straight from high school to college to law school to the public defender’s office to running for judge. How do I take a $10 million business case, put it in front of you, and say this judge is going to do a good job? That doesn’t mean they’re not smart, and some put in the time and come off really prepared. But from my perspective, appointment seems to make sense in those cases.
SCHULHOFER: Or only have lawyers vote!
FERGUSON: The way that they appoint magistrates at the federal level is they appoint a commission of a bunch of lawyers to review all the applications, interview all the applicants, and then they submit three names to the district court judges. That process helps.
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