Joan Howarth

What's the most important thing you are working on right now?

The pandemic forced the Thomas & Mack Legal Clinic to suddenly change how we deliver legal services. Students, faculty, and staff made the pivot and continued to provide excellent representation when the family, criminal, and immigration courts and Las Vegas schools were chaotic. Supporting our clients is always the most important thing I do. My other big project is to continue to write about attorney licensing policy, including the issues of the pandemic and bar exams. 
 
What is your newest big project?

I was honored to be appointed to join the Nevada Board of Bar Examiners in April 2020. The other board members are the unsung heroes of the bar. I have learned a lot, and am incredibly impressed by the thoughtfulness and dedication that board members—most of whom have been doing this volunteer leadership for many years—bring to the task of assuring that new lawyers possess minimum competence to practice law. 

What pandemic entertainment can you recommend?

I’ve been happy to lose myself in Little Fires Everywhere, Mrs. America, and, of course, Perry Mason. I wrote a two-paragraph autobiography in the 5th grade that declared that the chances of me becoming a lawyer like Perry Mason were 100 percent. But these challenging times have also driven me to comfort television, like Frazier and the Golden Girls. When we got the Disney channel to see Hamilton (which we watched three times) I happily binge-watched Spin and Marty, my first must-see television as part of the Mickey Mouse Club in the 1950s.