Faculty Focus: New Faces
Distinguished Fellow of Gaming Law and Visiting Professor of Law
Jennifer Carleton has unique industry expertise in payments, internet, sports, and Indian gaming, as well as insight into the unique issues that arise when technology and regulation intersect. She serves as the first Chief Legal Officer for Sightline Payments and during last academic year, she served as the Distinguished Fellow in the Indian Nations Gaming and Governance Program (INGG) at Boyd Law School.
Before Sightline, Professor Carleton was in-house counsel for an Indian casino for a decade and then spent 14 years in private practice as an adviser to some of the premier public and private gaming and investment companies in the world. She has taught advanced federal Indian gaming at the University of Wisconsin Law School and Boyd Law. She is a former member of the Executive Committee of the Gaming Law Section of the State Bar of Nevada, a former trustee of the International Association of Gaming Advisors, was previously the chair of the Indian Gaming Section of the State Bar of Wisconsin, and has published numerous articles on investment and Indian gaming regulatory compliance. Professor Carleton was recently announced as a finalist for the 2022 Global Gaming Awards American Executive of the Year.
Professor of Law
Professor Courtney Cross joined the faculty at the William S. Boyd School of Law at UNLV in Fall 2023. Professor Cross will design and teach a new law clinic focused on providing legal services to survivors of intimate partner violence, with an emphasis on advocating for criminalized survivors, slated to begin in spring 2024.
Professor Cross’ research focuses on the intersectionality of domestic violence, criminal law, poverty, and public health. Her scholarship has appeared in leading law reviews, including the UC Davis Law Review, the Washington & Lee Law Review, and the Utah Law Review. Prior to Boyd Law, Professor Cross was an associate professor of Clinical Legal Instruction and the director of the Domestic Violence Law Clinic at the University of Alabama School of Law. She has taught in the Civil Litigation Clinic at the University of Denver and was a clinical teaching
fellow in the Domestic Violence Clinic at Georgetown University.
Prior to joining academia, Professor Cross served as an Equal Justice Works/AmeriCorps Fellow and staff attorney at a women’s reentry non-profit in Washington where she represented formerly incarcerated women in domestic violence and family court proceedings. She also represented incarcerated women in parole revocation hearings.
Director of the Indian Nations Gaming and Governance (INGG) Program and Assistant Professor-in-Residence
Professor Danielle Ta’Sheena Finn is a citizen of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe. She is Hunkpapa Lakota, Inhanktowan Dakota, Assiniboine, and Metis. Before coming to Boyd, Profes-
sor Finn served as a district court judge for the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe.
Previously, Finn was the Native American Affairs Advisor for the Office of the Governor of the state of Minnesota and the External Affairs Director for the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe.
As the Indigenous Studies Director at Cankdeska Cikana Community College, she taught courses such as Introduction to Native American and Indigenous Studies, Tribal Governance, Tribal Administration, Native Americans in the Cinema, and Federal Indian Law and Policy, among others.
At Sinte Gleska University, Finn has taught various classes, including Federal Indian Law, Native American Property Rights, Business Law, Criminal Law, Criminal Prosecution and Defense, Sicangu Oyate Bar Association Topics and Tribal Court Practice Methods, and Civil and Criminal Jurisdiction in Indian Country.
Director of the Academic Success Program and Assistant Professor-in-Residence
Prior to joining Boyd, Professor Nachman Gutowski served as Director of Accreditation and Associate Professor of Academic Success and Bar Preparation at the Benjamin L. Crump College of Law at St. Thomas University in Miami.
Before entering academia, he spent eight years in the legal education focused, corporate, national bar review industry. Gutowski has successful passed multiple bar exams and has scored high enough on the Uniform Bar Exam to meet the required score for more than three dozen jurisdictions. As a recognized bar exam substantive and skills expert, his scholarship focuses on academic success in law school, discrimination related to the bar exam, and licensure requirements for legal educational institutions.
He currently serves on the Association of American Law Schools Section on Academic Support as a member of the Board of Directors, as well as a member of the Bar Advocacy Committee for the Association of Academic Success Educators. He is also a member of the American Bar Association Section on Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar.
Research Librarian and Assistant Professor
Professor James Rich (JD ’18) has rejoined Boyd School of Law as a research librarian and assistant professor of law after serving as a research librarian at Loyola Law School in Los
Angeles this past academic year.
Rich holds a master’s degree in library and information science from the University of Missouri. From 2015-18, he was a student at the Boyd School of Law, graduating cum laude with dual concentrations in Workplace Law and Dispute Resolution. For five academic terms during law school, Rich worked as a library research assistant.
He holds a Bachelor of Arts cum laude from Villanova University in Pennsylvania. From 1993-2005, Rich served as an officer in the U.S. Marine Corps and Marine Corps Reserve and from 2005-15 as a public affairs officer with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. He is a member of the American Library Association and the American Association of Law Libraries.
Professor of Law
Professor Nantiya Ruan joined Boyd Law in the fall of 2023. She brings her considerable strengths in teaching legal writing to Boyd’s top- ranked Lawyering Process program. She will also teach courses related to her other areas of expertise in workplace law and homeless advocacy.
Professor Ruan’s research and scholarship explore low-wage work, collective action, poverty and homelessness, and social justice teaching. Her scholarship has appeared or will appear in, among other publications, the Georgetown Journal on Poverty Law & Policy, the Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review, the Brooklyn Law Review, the ABA Journal of Labor & Employment Law, the Clinical Law Review, the Villanova Law Review, the Vanderbilt Law Review, and the Marquette Law Review.
Ruan graduated from the University of Denver with dual J.D. & M.S.W. degrees and clerked in the U.S. District Court in New York. She has represented plaintiffs in discrimination, pay equity, and wage and hour class actions. She is a dedicated advocate for workers and indigent clients. The legal writing community recently awarded her the Terri LeClercq Courage Award (LWI) and the Inaugural Diversity Award (ALWD).