Hi, I'm David. Glad you're here.

I mediate disputes and I write.

The legal work came first. I spent years as General Counsel at Las Vegas REALTORS®, one of the ten largest REALTOR® associations in the country. I drafted every statewide residential real estate form used by more than 18,000 REALTORS®. That includes the ones with mandatory mediation clauses built in. During the 2008 financial crisis I served as regional counsel for Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. I represented parties in FDIC receiverships. I have spent more than two decades inside the problems people bring to a mediator. Real estate. Contracts. Employment. The disputes that come with property and money and work.

The training was deliberate. A JD from Lewis & Clark Law School, where I was a Dean's Fellow. The Professional Mediation Certificate from Cornell's ILR School. A CIPP/US credential in privacy. A BA from BYU. I have taught philosophy as an adjunct at the College of Southern Nevada. The habit of thinking clearly is worth practicing.

I did not come to mediation to fill a gap in the market. I came to it because I kept watching disputes that should have settled turn into fights. Fights that cost everyone more than the thing they were fighting over. A good mediator does not pick a side. He finds the settlement both sides can live with.

Mediation is not new ground for me. I have sat in hundreds of mediations as an advocate. I administered the mediation program at Las Vegas REALTORS®, the one that handled the disputes the forms I drafted sent to the table. When the mediators hit a wall, they came to me. Sometimes I talked them through it. Sometimes I stepped into the session myself. I trained as a neutral, including the National Association of REALTORS® Mediator/Mediation Training. I have seen what settles a case and what keeps it from settling, from both sides of the table.

Giving back is personal. My father was a Vietnam veteran. I remember the lean years. The only work he could find was a janitor's shift at the post office, two in the morning to six, while he went back to school for a business degree. I know what that kind of quiet effort costs. I know who carries it.

So the veterans work matters to me. In 2024 I ran the Big Sur and Chicago marathons for Team Tillman, the Pat Tillman Foundation's endurance program, to raise money for military families. Every year I help with Operation Believe. We bring Christmas Eve to Las Vegas veteran families who need it. The tree. The gifts. The food. The rent.

The cancer work is personal too. My mother had cancer. In 2015 the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society named me Man of the Year. I raised tens of thousands of dollars for research. You do that kind of thing for a reason. She was mine.

Off the clock, there is wood, engines, and miles. I build things in the shop. I ride. I run. Most mornings I run with Leo, my German shepherd, who came to us from the pound and now runs the house. The detours are not separate from the work. They are where the thinking happens.

I have been a Nevadan for 25 years. I know the state, its people, and the way disputes actually play out here.