Hon. Elissa Cadish

Judge Elissa Cadish graduated magna cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania in 1986, receiving her Bachelor of Arts degree with honors in Political Science. She received her law degree from the University of Virginia School of Law in 1989. After graduation, she moved to Las Vegas and clerked for two years for Honorable Philip M. Pro in the United States District Court for the District of Nevada.

Judge Cadish then entered private practice where she focused on commercial litigation and employment law. She practiced most recently at Hale Lane Peek Dennison and Howard, where she worked from 1995 until August of 2007, becoming a shareholder at Hale Lane in 2000. In July of 2007, she was appointed to fill the District Judge vacancy in Department 6 where she presently serves.

Judge Cadish was President of the Southern Nevada Association of Women Attorneys from 2004 to 2006, and remains an active member in that organization. She is also a Master in the Howard D. McKibben Inn of Court.  She was Chair of the Court’s Civil Bench Bar Committee from 2008 until 2011, President of the Howard D. McKibben Chapter of the American Inn of Court from 2010 to 2012, Judicial Representative on the Clark County Bar Association’s Executive Board from January 2010 to December 2011, and is currently Chair of the State Bar’s Law Related Education Committee.  She was honored as the Clark County Bar Association’s Ambassador of the Year for 2010, the Trial by Peers Judge of the Year for 2009, and a recipient of the Clark County Law Foundation’s Liberty Bell Award in 2016.  She was recently elected to membership in the American Law Institute.  Judge Cadish hears civil and criminal cases in District Court.