Bonnie Bulla, who was appointed to Department 3 of the Nevada Court of Appeals by Governor Steve Sisolak in February 2019, and is running to retain that seat in the November general election, will be the featured speaker at Monday's virtual Democratic luncheon. She is opposed by Susan Bush, a Las Vegas attorney in private practice.
Bulla was elevated to the Court of Appeals after a rigorous, comprehensive and competitive selection process conducted by the Nevada Commission on Judicial Selection. By then she had already served on the bench for more than 12 years as the Discovery Commissioner for the Eighth Judicial District Court, where she worked collaboratively with all 32 judges of the Eighth District, resolving tens of thousands of pre-trial discovery disputes spanning virtually every area of law.
Judge Bulla was appointed to the Nevada Supreme Court Rules Committee by Justices Gibbons and Pickering to revise the Nevada Rules of Civil Procedure. She has also been a member of the Eighth Judicial District Court Rules Committee. She has served as a grader of the Nevada Bar Exam, been an instructor in the National Institute of Trial Advocacy Deposition Program, a lecturer in pretrial discovery at the Nevada State Bar’s Trial Academy Young Lawyer’s Section, and was selected to serve as a judge for Trial by Peers, a diversionary program for youthful offenders. She served as a judge for Nevada's “We The People” high school civics competition, and has also coached soccer for children with special needs through the American Youth Soccer Organization. She is also a long-time volunteer at Amazing Grace Ministry, where she assists the poor, homeless, and near homeless of Las Vegas.
Bonnie was born in Phoenix. In 1984, she graduated from from Arizona State University Summa Cum Laude and Phi Beta Kappa with a bachelor of science degree in economics, and received her J.D. from Arizona State's College of Law in 1987. She moved to Nevada immediately after law school, and began a 19-year career as a litigator, working with some of Nevada's finest attorneys on a wide variety of complex litigation matters until being selected to be Discovery Commissioner from a field of 50 candidates in 2007. She is past president of the Howard D. McKibben Chapter of the American Inns of Court, and has been a member of the Nevada Bar since 1987.
Judge Bulla's career experience includes working as an attorney, hearing master, discovery commissioner and appellate judge. She is a past president of the Southern Nevada Association of Women Attorneys, former Assembly Speaker of the American Bar Association Young Lawyers Division (1997-1998), and a 2018 recipient of the Clark County Law Foundation Liberty Bell Award. She was given an AV Pre-eminent rating by Martindale Hubbell's Judicial Edition.
Sponsored by the Democratic Men's Committee, this event is scheduled for noon on Monday, August 3rd, and will be held online via Zoom teleconference due to the temporary shutdown of in-person venues. Those wishing to be on distribution for a link to the teleconference can email Rich Dunn, Men's Committee Events Coordinator, at richdunn@aol.com.