Clark County Judge Joanna Kishner is among the roughly one-third of Eighth District incumbents who drew challengers in this year’s election. She’ll face attorney Alexandra Beth McLeod in the contest for Department 31. 

“Many of us who are experienced and make some of the hardest decisions on the bench seem to have drawn a challenger this time, and I’m included in that group,” Kishner, who is seeking a third term, told the Current.  

Kishner is a 1989 graduate of UCLA School of Law and was admitted to practice in Nevada in 1993. 

Of the 232 attorneys who evaluated Kishner in the Las Vegas Review-Journal’s Judging the Judges survey, 46.6% said she should be retained. Her highest score was for integrity while her lowest score was for legal ability. 

McLeod says she chose to challenge Kishner because she’s among the lowest-rated judges in the survey. 

Kishner does not put a lot of stock in the survey, noting the attorneys who work for the firms listed as supporters on her website outnumber those who completed the evaluation. Her endorsements, she says, exhibit the “depth and breadth” of her support from the legal community. 

Kishner says she’s never reached out to anyone to complete the survey, “good, bad, or indifferent. So you can appreciate that certain people might choose to fill it out in an election year.”

Still, she says, she’s been able to learn from the comments. 

“Some people don’t like the fact that I explain my rulings, and I think it’s very important so they know it’s a well-reasoned ruling,” Kishner says. 

Kishner notes she handles complex litigation. 

“I am fortunate to have almost all of the social media cases where the State of Nevada has sued a lot of the different entities,” she says. 

That includes Attorney General Aaron Ford’s case against Meta, which, along with other state actions, led to a national settlement of as much as $17.1 billion, along with Meta’s pledge to enact comprehensive child-safety features on its platforms. 

Nevada is guaranteed to receive more than $178 million, according to Ford. 

In the State of Nevada vs. TikTok, a consumer protection case, a “whole bundle of very sophisticated attorneys from around the country raised a lot of challenges to the case being handled here,” says Kishner. 

Kishner says she wrote a “very long decision” addressing those issues on TikTok’s motion to dismiss. Her decision was affirmed by the Nevada Supreme Court, allowing the state to proceed to trial against TikTok. The ruling, Kishner says, has been raised in other cases involving social media. 

Of 155 civil appeals, Kishner has been found in error on 50 cases. 

She is endorsed by dozens of law enforcement organizations, labor unions including the Culinary and Bartenders unions, and a number of community and industry organizations including the left-leaning Progressive Leadership Alliance of Nevada, the Republican-funded Third Branch PAC, the Israeli American Civic Action Group, Asian American Pacific Islanders, the National Organization of Women (NOW, the Latin Chamber of Commerce, and the Adult Residential Care Providers of Nevada.  

As of July, Kishner had raised $487,000 and had $452,000 in the bank. 

McLeod, a graduate of McGeorge School of Law and a member of the Nevada Bar since 2002, is making her third run for the bench, following losses in 2020 and 2024. She’s represented both plaintiffs and defendants in civil cases. 

She thinks proceedings in Kishner’s court “have gotten a little stale. I commend her for her service but I think it’s time for change.” 

McLeod says her first priority is to present a respectful demeanor. Attorneys who come before Kishner, she says, citing comments from the RJ evaluation,  “are not having a good experience where they are feeling respected as professionals, and they don’t feel that their clients are getting a fair shake. I would bring courtesy back to the courtroom.”

Department 31, which was previously a business court, now hears civil matters. 

McLeod acknowledges the increased use of artificial intelligence in litigation can be confounding – from clients who expect a victory and large judgment after a consultation with ChatGPT, to those who balk at being billed for multiple hours when AI takes minutes to plot their legal course.   

McLeod says her approach to pro se litigants and attorneys who employ AI would be nuanced. 

“The outcome would be the same, but I think that the violation by a trained attorney licensed to practice law would be heavier and would include a referral to the bar,” McLeod says. “Whereas if a pro se litigant were to make the same mistake, there’s no bar to report them to.”

McLeod has raised just under $48,000, including in-kind donations totalling $30,000, and reports $42,000 on hand. Her website does not include any endorsements.