Professional Background

Tara Teegarden is an attorney in the Commercial & Complex Litigation Practice Group at McDonald Carano.  She has experience working on matters in both state and federal courts, including employment, environmental, civil rights, first-party bad faith, and tax law, representing local, state and national corporate entities in the real estate, healthcare, finance, energy, retail and manufacturing sectors.

Ms. Teegarden has assisted with various stages of the litigation process, such as providing initial evaluation of allegations, conducting legal research, and drafting pleadings, substantive and dispositive motions, discovery requests, discovery responses, and settlement agreements. She has also taken depositions and prepared witnesses.

Her employment litigation experience includes discrimination, harassment and retaliation under Title VII, as well as other federal and state labor and employment law statutes.  Ms. Teegarden has worked closely with state and local agencies to ensure compliance with federal and state labor laws, and she also has experience drafting Ninth Circuit briefs in the employment law cases.  Her environmental law experience includes environmental compliance and permitting matters, environmental due diligence, water law, and public land law.  Ms. Teegarden has represented clients in environmental litigation involving state and federal enforcement actions.

During law school, Ms. Teegarden served as an Environmental Legal Intern for the Orange County Coastkeeper and an Advanced Law Student for the Environmental Law Clinic of the University of California, Irvine.  One of her projects involved analyzing Federal Endangered Species Act expenditure reports in collaboration with the Defenders of Wildlife.  She also authored an amicus brief for the California Court of Appeals that analyzed the Clean Water Act’s anti-backsliding and the federal anti-degradation regulation.

Ms. Teegarden earned a J.D. from the University of California, Irvine School of Law, a Master of Science in Environmental Studies from California State University, Fullerton, and a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy from the University of California, Los Angeles.  During law school, she served on the Executive Board and as the Senior Notes and Comments Editor for the UC Irvine Law Review. She also served as Editor of the UC Irvine Journal of International, Transactional, and Comparative Law.

After completing her J.D. at the University of California, Irvine, Ms. Teegarden moved to Las Vegas and joined the litigation department of a national law firm.  She is admitted to practice in Nevada state and federal courts.

Professional Affiliations

• Editor, Communiqué, Clark County Bar Association magazine (2022)
• Member, Publications Committee, Clark County Bar Association (2021-current)
• Member, New Lawyers Committee, Clark County Bar Association (2021-current)
• Member, Southern Nevada Association of Women Attorneys

Awards and Recognition

• Faculty Award, Law of Evidence, UC Irvine School of Law
• Faculty Award, Equity Litigation, UC Irvine School of Law
• Deans Award, Law and Behavior, UC Irvine School of Law
• Pro Bono120 Hour Award, UC Irvine School of Law
• Top 16, UC Irvine Law Moot Court, UC Irvine School of Law
• Class of 2014 Commencement Speaker, Environmental Studies Department, California State University, Fullerton (Master of Science program)
• Donald Kalish Prize, University of California, Los Angeles (Bachelor of Arts program)

Publications

• “Assessing State Laws and Resources for Endangered Species Protection,” Environmental Law Reporter, Environmental Law Institute, Washington, DC., 2017

Community Engagement

Ms. Teegarden served as a Law Clerk for the Children’s Law Center of California in Los Angeles.  She conducted witness interviews, trial preparation, research and preparation of motions, custody orders, action reports, and subpoenas.  She also monitored the enforcement of court orders.

Representative Engagements

• Defense of a company against allegations of breach of contract and bad faith, obtained favorable settlement
• Conducted independent investigation of harassment and discrimination claims
• Defense of a state agency in the civil rights context, culminated in dismissal

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