About Tami D. Cowden

I am Tami Cowden, and I am Of Counsel with Kummer Kaempfer Bonner Renshaw & Ferrario, (aka KKBRF) where I am a founding member of the firm’s Appellate Practice Group. I serve as Editor-in-Chief of the Clark County Bar Association’s publication, The Communiqué. I am also a member of CCBA’s CLE committee. In my spare time, I write fiction, and in addition to giving legal writing related seminars, I occasionally even give fiction writing workshops.   To read my online professional biography, simply click here.

My path to an appellate practice may seem convoluted, but I’ve had a good time along the way. I went to law school after aborting my career as an historian. While I was having a great time devoting myself to Russian and Middle Eastern history, it suddenly occurred to me that repaying my education loans might prove difficult. Shortly after that epiphany, I found myself at the University of Colorado School of Law.

Those of us who go to law school as an after thought are frequently not all that savvy about certain realities. I never expressed the slightest interest in a law review berth, because I had the idea that law review was supposed to teach you how to write – and I’d been earning kudos for my writing ability all my life. Unaware of the heightened respect law review service garnered a resume, I decided to do something that would help me learn something I desperately needed – the ability to speak in public. So I signed up for CU’s Rothergerber Moot Court competition. 

Today I laugh at my naiveté regarding law review, but the truth is, I’d do it the same way again if I had the choice. After all, writing for law review, while certainly good experience, would not have honed my brief writing craft. But moot court introduced me to the field of law I love, and opened the doors to using my skills to best advantage as a lawyer.

After law school, I clerked for two judges on the Colorado Court of Appeals, and then became a staff attorney there. Staff counsel are often called the hidden judiciary, and, the truth is, any busy court needs that kind of help. Over the course of about five years, I wrote more than four hundred legal opinions – each opinion requiring review of the briefs of the parties and the record in the case. I learned up close and personal what makes or breaks a case on appeal.

Having been a ghostwriter for judges for all that time, I decided to try my hand at ghostwriting for attorneys. While being a contract brief writer is not all that unusual today, it was relatively uncommon in the early 1990’s.  But there were just as many lawyers who hated to write back then as there are now. 

During that time, I discovered another love of mine –teaching. After teaching part time for several years, an opportunity arose at the University of Denver College of Law to teach full time.  I jumped on it.  A few years of reading forty to fifty versions of the same memorandum or brief clarified for me the crucial impact even the slightest difference in wording can make. 

Spousal economic issues brought me to Nevada, where, much to my surprise, this attorney who had always eschewed large law firm practice, ended up at KKBRF, one of the largest and oldest firms in the state. But until recently, KKBRF had no formal appellate practice group, although, of course, its litigation department handled any cases that proceeded to an appeal. However, that gap has now been filled, with my colleagues J.Thomas Susich and  Sheri Ann Forbes Murray joining me in the Appellate Practice Group. 

I hope you enjoy this blog. Please feel free to share your comments and suggestions with me.