From Courtroom Nerves to Career Confidence: Sondra Brower is Awarded the Emilie Wanderer Scholarship

Written By: Pat McDonnell 

Anyone in the legal profession will tell you — life in the courtroom can be tense, even intimidating. 

For recent Boyd Law grad Sondra Brower, serving as second chair during a felony jury trial turned that tension into confidence, sharpening her career goals and confirming her passion for criminal law. Brower was the 2024-2025 recipient of Boyd’s Emilie Wanderer Scholarship, named for Las Vegas’s first female attorney. 

Her law school journey was packed with diverse, hands-on experience: an externship with the Eighth Judicial District Court in Fall 2023, a summer internship with the Clark County District Attorney’s Office, and a Fall 2024 externship with the Nye County DA’s Office, that provided her with the experience in the high-stakes jury trial this past winter. Those experiences, Brower says, prepared her to navigate complex legal issues.

“I think every day I got more comfortable, but I was still nervous,” Brower said of the trial. “You put so much effort into learning the law, and it was comforting to be told, ‘You knew it as well as the other attorneys.’” 

Wanderer, who passed away in 2005, established the scholarship in 1999 with a $450,000 gift to the law school. Her son, John Wanderer, remains actively involved with the law school. Brower, a Henderson native, said that generosity allowed her to take on valuable internships throughout law school. 

In August 2025, she began a clerkship with Judge Joe Hardy, Jr., in the Eighth Judicial District Court. “I’ll be seeing how decisions are made and honing the skills I want to use in the courtroom,” she said, noting that her earlier externship showed her how much she enjoys researching case issues. “Judge Hardy changed the trajectory I wanted to take — the reason I wanted to do a clerkship at all.”