Busy, Yet Balanced: Boyd’s Part-Time Evening Program
By Renee M. Kadlubek

To all those who say you can’t go to law school because, “you are too old,” “you have children,” “you are married,” “you have a career, or “you are pursuing other graduate degrees,” the rest of the students in the part-time evening program at William S. Boyd School of Law and I say, “YES YOU CAN!”

The part-time evening program at Boyd is a four-year program that offers classes usually between 6:00 p.m. and 9:00 p.m. Students participating in this program generally take three classes during each of the Fall and Spring semesters, and two classes in the Summer. Although the program is in the evening, the quality of instruction is in no way compromised. In fact, many of the classes are taught by the same faculty members who teach the students enrolled full-time. The typical size of the evening classes is between forty and fifty students, with the exception of the legal writing classes, which are half that size. Boyd has offered the part-time option since its doors opened, and has graduated successful attorneys who otherwise may not have had an opportunity to go to law school.

The part-time evening students are a diverse group. Although some students enter the program directly after finishing their bachelor’s degrees, most do not. The students in the program have varying levels of work experience, and many continue to work while in law school. Some of these students are accountants, educators, paralegals, psychologists, police officers, and computer technicians by day, and law students by night.

There are a myriad of benefits to being able to work while in law school. I, for example, work as a school psychologist for the Clark County School District, which is a career I love. In the past few years, I wanted to pursue a law degree, but I did not want to give up my career to do so. By studying law in the part-time evening program, I have been able to continue my work as a school psychologist. My educational background and work experience have enhanced my understanding of legal issues, and my emerging legal skills are helping me become a better school psychologist. I am better able to analyze situations, problem solve, advocate for children, and understand the law as it relates to mental health and education. Of course, there is a practical side to working while attending law school part time. It is nice to be able to continue to pay my mortgage and tuition without having to take out student loans.

The part-time evening program also accommodates students with families of their own. Jennifer Gooss, a first-year student in this program, is a newlywed, has three step-sons, and a ten-month-old daughter. While attaining her bachelor’s degrees in philosophy and english, she worked in accounts receivable. After graduating in 2007, Jennifer applied to the part-time evening program at Boyd so that she could spend more time with her new husband and help raise her children. Had the program not been available to her, she probably would have gone to another state that had such a program. Jennifer sees the multifaceted backgrounds of the students in this program as an advantage. She explains, “I like that the other students in our class have real world experience. It makes discussions richer and more interesting when people have experience to back up their opinions. Having a family and responsibilities outside of law school helps keep everything in perspective.”

Mark Hesiak is also a first-year student in the part-time evening program. He is married, has a two-year-old daughter, and is expecting another baby in ten weeks. He also works full-time, putting to use his bachelor’s degree in biochemistry from the University of Illinois as a quality control manager for a subcontractor at CityCenter. After talking to a construction litigator while on his job, Mark was determined to pursue a legal career. However, when Mark added up the cost to quit his job and attend law school full-time, he found it nearly impossible. Mark already had a house, and a family to support. Had the part-time evening program not been an option, Mark instead would have pursued Master degrees in Business Administration and Economics, which fit a working student’s schedule.

In addition to the part-time evening program, Boyd offers three dual degree programs. Students can get a Master’s degree in Social Work (J.D./M.S.W.), a Master’s degree in Business Administration (J.D./M.B.A.), or a Doctor of Philosophy degree in Education (J.D./Ph.D) while also obtaining a law degree. Part-time evening students are, or have been, represented in each of these dual programs. Currently, every student in the dual J.D./Ph.D. program is enrolled in the part-time evening program at the law school.

Leslie Strasser Murdock is one such student. She is in her second year in the part-time evening program at Boyd. Leslie has a daughter just under a year old, works as a graduate assistant, and was the first student to be admitted to the J.D./Ph.D. program. Leslie lived in New York City and was attracted to the University of Nevada, Las Vegas specifically because they offered the dual J.D./Ph.D. program. Leslie would not have come to Boyd had the part-time evening option not been available. Leslie has participated in Boyd’s in-house Education clinic in which she was able to provide practical legal assistance to clients with educational issues. As part of her graduate assistantship, she has been heavily involved in Kids’ Court School. This is a program at Boyd aimed at educating child witnesses about the investigative and judicial processes. Working under Dr. Rebecca Nathanson, Leslie coordinates appointments, recruits volunteers, teaches the curriculum to clients, and assists in directing mock trials with the clients. Like Jennifer and Mark, she prefers to be in classes with others who have similar outside responsibilities as herself. Her unique program of study at Boyd is invaluable to Leslie whose passion is to give a voice to children involved in the legal process.

How can the part-time evening law students possibly do it all? First, Boyd values the part-time or nontraditional student equally to the full-time or traditional student. We have equal quality of instruction, equal expectations, and an equal opportunity to access personnel and services available to full-time students. Second, whenever the administration proposes changes, our program is taken into consideration, and we are given a voice. Third, we have an active student organization that seeks our opinions, comments and concerns regarding our program. The Organization for Part-Time and Nontraditional Law Students (OPLS) organizes philanthropic events, arranges for speaking events with practicing attorneys, and ensures that any concerns are heard by the appropriate administrators. The support from Boyd and OPLS comprises a large part of how the part-time evening students are able to maintain their busy lives and still succeed in law school.

Jennifer, Mark, and Leslie are only three examples of the extraordinary people who make up the part-time evening program at Boyd. Overall, we are a diverse, motivated, experienced, and talented group. Boyd anticipates and addresses issues to help us balance our legal education with our other responsibilities out of school. Boyd values us and embraces our strengths. The part-time evening students have been, and continue to be, assets to the law school and, upon graduation, to the legal community. We take pride in the fact that we are Boyd students, and we also take pride in the fact that we are mothers, fathers, professionals, wives, husbands, or graduate students. It isn’t easy to balance our outside lives and law school, but for the last ten years, Boyd’s part-time evening students continue to prove that we can do it.

Renee M. Kadlubek works as a school psychologist for the Clark County School District. She is a first-year law student in the dual J.D./Ph.D. program at Boyd School of Law. Renee is also working toward her Ph.D. in Educational Psychology with an emphasis in School Psychology.

Verve and Vision: Ten Years of Success at Boyd
By Dean John Valery White

T his year the William S. Boyd School of Law commemorates ten years of achievement. In events from April of this year to April 2009, we will celebrate our creation, growth, and success. I hope through these celebratory events to convey just how remarkable our accomplishments have been and honor the students, faculty, administrators, and civic leaders who made it possible. Law school is, naturally, a signal event in the memories of lawyers. And every lawyer remembers vividly their own experiences. Until recently, the reminiscences of Nevada lawyers were of faraway places – of law school homes quite removed from the rhythms and demands of our growing state. Unsurprisingly, the desire for a law school in Nevada was longstanding, especially after the stand-alone Old School folded in the 1980s. But that a school of Boyd’s character would emerge was in no way guaranteed by these desires. Many law schools have launched in the last couple of decades, though few have seen the success that Boyd has experienced. This success owes particularly to the many people who dared to build a great law school. That demand for greatness persists and animates our vision of going forward.

A recent news story highlighted that Boyd graduates have quickly come to comprise over ten percent of the Clark County Bar and are well represented throughout the state. Our graduates will play a crucial role in the shaping of the future of the Nevada and Clark County bars. This significant accomplishment requires no embellishment. In just a decade and with only seven graduated classes, Boyd has helped focus the Nevada bar on Nevada, connecting our graduates and others to the ever-increasing demands of our growing community.

The accomplishments of Boyd over the last ten years are also reflected in the professionalism of our graduates and their prominent commitment to the community. Boyd graduates are heavily represented among the pro bono attorneys honored by Clark County Legal Services each year and are often the drivers of pro bono efforts at many of their firms. This is but a reflection of our success at inculcating professional values in our students and graduates.

Our achievements are the clear result of our strong and committed faculty’s shared vision. It is a vision of an engaged, professional community around which responsibility to clients, skill, and intellectual pursuit come together in a shared commitment to service. Dean Morgan, along with the first faculty members he assembled in Paradise Elementary School and with Library Director Rick Brown, Deans Christine Smith and Frank Durand, embraced this vision and built a faculty around it. Today, our Faculty is renowned for their scholarly production, but holds to its commitment to this particular kind of legal education. It is an approach to legal education which is expensive and intensive, the kind usually associated with very well endowed private schools. It is made available here only because of the commitment of the faculty and administrators to this vision and the support of the bar and civic community in fulfilling it.

The importance of Boyd’s approach to legal education is all the more important as legal education splits between full service law schools – offering specialty programs and comprehensive legal education taught by scholars of law – and schools focused more narrowly on bar passage. Our choice to become the former places us in rare company. Since 1988 at least twenty-four new schools have been accredited by the ABA and at least three others reaccredited after sale or acquisition. Of these twenty-seven, nine remain only provisionally accredited, and just three are among the U.S. News & World Report’s top 100 law schools. Boyd is the only one of those three that is a new school – the other two, Seattle and Penn State, were acquired by their respective Universities. Most of the remainder are ranked in the “fourth tier”. There are deep problems with the method of the U.S. News & World Report rankings, but in the broadest sense these results highlight that ours is one of the few law schools that has successfully pursued the strategy of being a comprehensive law school.

What is more important than any particular magazine ranking is the quality of the lawyers we produce. Our graduates are simply excellent, a fact that is becoming more apparent every day, as they become more senior members of the bar. It is telling to me that we have been able to achieve recognition, by magazines, by the bar, and by civic leaders, without abandoning our principled view of legal education. Our success owes to that view. Indeed, all we have achieved owes to the verve and vision of our founders, the daring and faith of our students, and the courageousness and commitment of our supporters. In celebrating all of that, we hope to persevere and build on this success for the next decade, for the future Nevada.

Dean John Valery White joins the UNLV Boyd School of Law from Louisiana State University (LSU) Paul M. Hebert Law Center where he was the J. Dawson Gasquet Memorial Professor of Law.