Emilie Wanderer, pioneering attorney, gives $450,000 to UNLV

One of Clark County's pioneering attorneys, Emilie Wanderer, didn't receive a law degree. In 1931, Wanderer dropped out of Fordham University due to lack of money and never went back. So she's sympathetic to the plight of students who aspire to be attorneys but can't afford tuition.

So sympathetic, in fact, that earlier this year the 89-year-old donated $450,000 for scholarships to UNLV's Boyd School of Law. "Because I had to cut short my education, I know the lack of money can be a big deterrent," said Wanderer, who was forced to drop out of the Fordham University Law School in 1931 but nevertheless went on to pass bar exams in New York and Nevada and even practiced in Chicago for 10 years.

During those years it was not necessary to possess a law degree to take a bar exam.

Richard Morgan, dean of the law school, was thrilled not only by the donation, made around the first of the year, but also with the donor. "She's a wonderful person," Morgan said. "Mrs. Wanderer is a great example of a pioneering lawyer who opened the way for lots and lots of women lawyers. She truly was a pioneer, coming here at a time when there virtually were no other women attorneys -- when Las Vegas was a very, very small town. This example of philanthropy is something that sets a good example. It is a good model for others to follow."

Moore said Wanderer's donation has created an endowment that will fund scholarships for any student based on academic merit and financial need.

Regulations require that endowments generate income for one year after they have been created before they can be used.

Reflecting on her illustrious career that included representing the Las Vegas chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Wanderer said she had a lot more obstacles to overcome than financial ones to make it in the legal profession.

What chance did a Jewish woman from New York with no law degree and three young sons have in succeeding as a lawyer in Las Vegas in 1947, she asks?

"In those days, women weren't welcome in the bar association," Wanderer said. "I was told 'don't even try to take the bar exam here. Even if you pass they will make life so miserable for you.' "

But Wanderer overcame sexism and other hurdles and left her imprint on Nevada legal history.

Las Vegas had 20,000 residents when she arrived in August 1946 with her sons in tow. "I was the only woman practicing law here my first two years," Wanderer said recently as she discussed her trail-blazing life, seated in the tastefully decorated living room of her home overlooking a golf course at McDonald Ranch in Henderson.

Wanderer passed the New York bar exam in 1933 and had been practicing law in New York even though she didn't have a law degree. During this time, she helped create the National Women's Bar Association. "I was head of a four-state area -- New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and Pennsylvania," she said.

Upon moving to Las Vegas, she worked as a legal assistant for Madison Graves before taking the state bar exam in 1947.

Over the years Wanderer took on every type of case but frivolous ones.

"I wouldn't take a case that didn't have merit," she said.

Some of her work, such as representing the NAACP, generated criticism from a segment of society that branded her a Communist. According to Wanderer, however, her interest was justice, not communism.

In 1955 she jumped at the chance to go into practice in Chicago with a former associate of Clarence Darrow, the famed civil-rights attorney noted for the John Scopes trial in which the Tennessee schoolteacher was tried for teaching evolution in his science class.

"I had been a disciple of Darrow," Wanderer said.

She kept her Las Vegas practice, leaving it in the hands of a partner, and worked with Fred Herz in Chicago for 10 years.

In 1965 she returned to Las Vegas, having grown weary of life in Chicago.

"I had roots here. The lifestyle was more to my liking," she said.

Her son John eventually went into law practice with her. He still keeps the firm's name, Wanderer & Wanderer.

Her oldest son, David, died of a heart attack in his early 30s. Wanderer dabbled in politics with two unsuccessful runs at District Court at Municipal Court judgeships.

"I never thought of myself as a pioneer," she said. "But you never know what is going to happen in life."

She hasn't retired completely. "I still pay dues to the state bar. I give advice every now and then."

Wanderer says she hates to see the legal profession becoming too commercial. "It should remain a profession of moral issues."

She said when she had her practice she never felt her gender or the gender of her clients mattered.

"Only case law was of utmost importance," she said.

Morgan is impressed with Wanderer's vigor, which does not seem to have withered with age.

"We should all be so lucky to be as sharp and optimistic as Mrs. Wanderer is at her stage in life," Morgan said.

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