Lawyer uses Web site to relay crucial rulings

After two decades of practicing law, Las Vegas attorney Tami Cowden finally discovered a way to combine her two passions: writing and legal issues.

Cowden recently started her own Web site, Appealing in Nevada, at www.nevadaappellatelaw.com, where she reports on the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. She also describes how proposed legislation would affect Nevada and keeps tabs on the state's Supreme Court.

The site is designed to keep attorneys statewide abreast of all the opinions handed down by judges, but it also boils down some of the legal matters to a level that even nonlawyers can understand.

Cowden's goal is to word her blog entries so that the public will be attracted to the site.

While she strives to keep "legalese" out of the blogs, explaining every Latin term in court decisions would be too time-consuming, she said.

"I find myself using terms that lawyers know; lawyers are my primary audience for this, in my opinion," Cowden said. "I do hope it is readable for the public as well."

She said she will not be bashful about expressing her opinions on judges' rulings and explaining what exactly they might mean to the state. She said she has no fear that one day she might appear before a judge she has criticized.

"If attorneys worried about voicing opinions like that, we'd never be able to say anything," she said. "I learned early in my practice to take a big-picture view of cases. It's rare that I look at a court opinion and say, 'That is just plain stupid.' I might not agree with it. I might not think it's good policy."

Cowden said she focuses on the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals because once cases are appealed to that court, they disappear for three or four years because of the lengthy appeals process. Attorneys and the public lose interest or forget about them, so she keeps all the legal types up to date.

"Unless it's in the news, lawyers may not hear what happened," Cowden said. "Part of what I want to do on my blog is little summaries from the 9th Circuit and the Nevada Supreme Court."

"I'm an appellate lawyer," said Cowden, who practices with the Las Vegas law firm Kummer, Kaempfer, Bonner, Renshaw & Ferrario. "I'm finding it pretty interesting. It's interesting to see opinions."

Cowden practiced law in Colorado before moving to Las Vegas in 2004. She has always embraced writing but ultimately chose law because she believed she would make a more comfortable living. Now she has both.

"I have managed to live my dream as a writer, although this is not how I envisioned it," she said.