Celebrating Over 75 Years of Serving Nevada’s Legal, Business, Government, and Civic Communities
Women Who Mean Business 2014
McDonald Carano congratulates Amanda Yen for being selected as one of only 10 women in the Women Who Mean Business special issue published by the Las Vegas Business Press/Las Vegas Review Journal. Amanda’s interview is provided below and the entire special issue is available here.
As the special issue explains, “The Las Vegas economy is on the mend, but the city’s business climate hasn’t reached recovery on its own. The bounceback has relied on the efforts of entrepreneurs, managers and philanthropists, working side by side to revive hard-hit industries, open and expand businesses, and train the next generation of workers. Through Women Who Mean Business, we have the opportunity to shine a spotlight on a few of those contributors. We gave our nod to women who are both blazing career trails in diverse fields and volunteering their free time to the community’s less fortunate residents. Their backgrounds and businesses are radically different, but they all share two traits: a strong work ethic and compassion for their fellow Las Vegans. If other aspiring entrepreneurs and business execs follow their example, our city’s recovery will be in good hands indeed.”
AMANDA YEN
Partner, McDonald Carano LLP
Amanda Yen’s undergraduate degree is in theater arts from Pepperdine University. It’s a far cry from Yen’s present role as partner at McDonald Carano, where she handles complex litigation as part of the legal team representing Tutor Perini Building Corp. in its high-profile lawsuit against MGM Resorts International over the largest private litigation construction project in the city.
Yen, a married 37-year-old mother of a 5-year-old son, said it was difficult breaking into the theater world after graduating in 1999. So, three years later, after scoring better on her law school admission test than on her graduate school exams (she considered graduate school to study English literature), Yen moved from California to Las Vegas to attend UNLV’s Boyd Law School.
After law school graduation, Yen accepted a federal clerkship in U.S. District Court before joining McDonald Carano in September 2006. The firm has 118 staff members at its Las Vegas and Reno offices. Yen became a member of the Asian Bar Association of Las Vegas and the Polycystic Kidney Disease Foundation. In fact, when she was married in 2007, Yen and her husband (an attorney she met in law school) requested donations to the PKD Foundation in lieu of gifts.
And from 2006 to 2008, Yen drew recognition as a pro bono attorney through the Legal Aid Center of Southern Nevada. Her law firm thought so highly of Yen that she was offered a contract position and allowed to work from home from 2009 to 2011 after the birth of her son. She was offered a partnership in 2013 and made it official in January.
It’s been 15 years since Yen left Pepperdine, and she’s transferred some skills she learned from the stage to the courtroom: “Choose your words carefully. Studying theater is a study of word placement, inflection and meaning and it is the same in drafting a brief and arguing in court.”
About McDonald Carano
In 2024, McDonald Carano celebrated its 75ᵗʰ Anniversary of serving Nevada’s legal, business, government, and civic communities. More than 60 lawyers and government affairs professionals serve Nevada, national, and international clients from our offices in Reno, Las Vegas, and Carson City. McDonald Carano provides transactional, litigation, regulatory, and government affairs services to startups, corporations, private companies, trade associations, nonprofits, public entities, high-net-worth individuals, and family offices throughout Nevada. We are deeply committed to supporting local communities by volunteering our time, resources, and services, including pro bono legal services, to nonprofit organizations, charitable foundations, and public service entities. We are proud to be your Nevada law firm since 1949.
Media Contact
Mark Buckovich
[email protected]
702.257.4559
You have chosen to send an email to McDonald Carano. The sending or receipt of this email and the information in it does not in itself create an attorney-client relationship. If you are not already a client, you should not provide us with information that you wish to have treated as privileged or confidential without first speaking to one of our lawyers. If you provide information before we confirm that you are a client and that we are willing and able to represent you, we may not be required to treat that information as privileged, confidential, or protected information, and we may be able to represent a party adverse to you.
I have read this and want to send an email.