Thaddeus Houston

Thad Houston is Counsel in McDonald Carano’s Reno office. He is primarily a litigator and a member of the Appellate Practice and Commercial & Complex Litigation Practice. He brings to bear significant legal writing experience, deep knowledge of practice and procedure in the District of Nevada, and substantive experience – both litigation and transactional – in intellectual property, privacy, and other technology-related law.

Prior to joining McDonald Carano in September 2025, Thad served as a Law Clerk for nearly seven years to the Honorable Miranda M. Du of the United States District Court for the District of Nevada, including serving as her Career Law Clerk during her term as Chief Judge from September 2019 to September 2024. Thad drafted orders, assisted with hearings and trials, and coordinated with other court units and external parties on Judge Du’s behalf. He also hired, trained, and managed Term Law Clerks and Externs. Moreover, he assisted Judge Du with all of her intellectual property and water law cases, along with most of her complex environmental cases during his time clerking for her.

Prior to his clerkship for Judge Du, Thad was an attorney in the San Francisco office of an Am Law 20 firm practicing both litigation and transactional law, with an emphasis on intellectual property and information privacy law. That said, his litigation experience from this time included cases involving intellectual property, labor and employment, products liability, breach of contract and other business torts, information privacy, and white-collar criminal defense. He gained experience in both state and federal court, from the filing of the complaint through to appeals. While he mostly researched and drafted pleadings and briefs, he also assisted with depositions, hearings, settlement conferences, and trials. He further assisted with managing all aspects of discovery, including negotiating the scope of discovery, drafting and responding to discovery requests, creating privilege logs, and supervising reviewing attorneys and paralegals.

Thad’s transactional experience in the Am Law 20 firm included counselling clients on intellectual property, privacy, and data security matters, and he was involved in the intellectual property, privacy, and data security components of due diligence for mergers and acquisitions. He also drafted and negotiated nondisclosure and proprietary information agreements, as well as website privacy policies and terms of use. He was further seconded for seven months in the international franchise group at a U.S.-headquartered Fortune 300 global clothing and accessories retailer.

Between college and law school, Thad served for three years as a Legal Assistant in the Legal Department of Google, Inc. in Mountain View, California. He worked on the “Legal Removals” team, which handled content removal requests from Google’s products and services worldwide, though he was primarily responsible for requests arriving in French and those implicating Google’s Maps, Earth, and StreetView products. He also served as lead research assistant for the Transparency Report, an industry-leading website that details Google’s responses to government requests, including content removal and user data requests. Thad further provided French-language litigation support in Paris, France for three months. In addition, Thad led the design and implementation of online and internal legal support and transparency tools.

• J.D., Law and Technology Certificate, University of California, Berkeley, School of Law, Berkeley, CA (2016)
  • Fellow of Berkeley Center for Law and Technology (2015-2016)
  • Berkeley Technology Law Journal Notes and Comments Editor (2014-2015) and Associate Editor (2013-2014)
  • Participant, Samuelson Law, Technology, and Public Policy Clinic (Spring 2015)
• B.A. in International Relations and French, Pomona College, Claremont, CA (2010)
  • Awards: The Cordell Hull Prize in International Relations
  • Theses: “Gaming the European Union Carbon Trading Scheme” (International Relations) and “Diderot et la forme dialogique” (French)
  • Study Abroad: Paris, France, Middlebury College Program, La Sorbonne, (Spring 2009)

• Nevada
  • District of Nevada
• California
  • Northern District of California
  • Central District of California
  • Eastern District of California
• United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
• Supreme Court of the United States

• Five Things to Help Secure Federal Removal Jurisdiction Under 28 U.S.C. §§ 1441 and 1446 (Communique’, January 2026)
• China Enacts Cybersecurity Laws: What to Know if Doing Business Abroad (The Daily Journal, Nov. 25, 2016) (with Francoise Gilbert)
• Jealous Husband, Wiretap Violation (The Daily Journal, Oct. 26, 2016) (with Carolyn McNiven)
• Constitutional Drag Race: Anonymous Online Speech After Digital Music News v. Superior Court, 30 Berkeley Tech. Law. J. 1243 (2015), http://btlj.org/2015/11/volume-30-annual-review-2015/.

• Member, Washoe County Bar Association
• Member, Clark County Bar Association