[CGarrett]

Yes, another post asking for advice about moving to Vegas. I've been diving into all these threads and many are several years old. A lot has happened in the Vegas area in the past 4 years so I'm hoping to get some basic input before I head out to check things out on my own.

My girlfriend and I live in Orange County, California. We both bought condos a few years ago when the housing market was at its bottom, and now the market has grown so high we are going to sell and cash out. We are very excited about the prospect of moving to either the Henderson area or Summerlin, and right now Henderson seems to be in the lead..maybe the Green Valley/MacDonald Ranch area. We are looking for a nice house in the $300,000 range and will likely pay 50% of it in cash as our down payment. We ultimately want to live in a family community, have a child and live a bit of a slower paced life in comfort. It is very hard to do that in Orange County unless you make +$200,000 a year. We are both college educated legal professionals (not attorneys) and we each have 10+ years experience in very large law firm environments. Right now we hope to find legal jobs somewhere downtown or in Henderson. I guess I am interested in knowing:

1. Currently how long is the average drive from Henderson up the 515 to Downtown? I'm used to an hour commute to work (for only 16 miles), so anything around 30 minutes is fine with me. Is it easier to get to downtown from Summerlin or Henderson?

2. Is there any kind of significant job market in the legal industry, or for college educated individuals looking to make decent money ($70,000+ a year), or is the market completely dominated by lower wage service jobs? I don't mean to sound rude with this question, but the fact is that Vegas is a hospitality/service town. A quick job search on Craigslist will result in 20 service positions open for every legal position.

3. Are Green Valley or surrounding areas south of the 215 still nice? Are the schools nice, or better than what they were in 2010?

4. Although there are no guarantees in life, considering the basic information I provided about my situation, does it sound like we are in a good position for moving to the area?

5. The real estate market out in Vegas seems to be pretty crazy. Anyone know of an agent or agency that comes highly recommended and will provide the service and time to us that we need to make our move as seamless as possible?

[ddrhazy]

1. Probably 30 minutes and both Summerlin and Henderson have similar commutes to downtown.

2. No idea, so won't bother responding.

3. Yes, they're nice. Summerlin, Green Valley are still the knee jerk responses of "where is nice in LV".

4. Can't give you guarantees on finding paralegal work, no idea.

5. It's not crazy here, it's just that the nice houses that are priced properly will not sit on the market longer than 30 days. The other ones will sit longer.

[ragabnh]

Check the Anthem, Seven Hills in Henderson, highly recommended. Your commute should not be more than 1/2 hour using I-215 and I-515, been there done that.

[CGarrett]

Originally Posted by ragabnh

Check the Anthem, Seven Hills in Henderson, highly recommended. Your commute should not be more than 1/2 hour using I-215 and I-515, been there done that.

Meaning you've done this commute into downtown?

[ny2lv]

We are just west of Green Valley and takes about 25 minutes to downtown on I-15 with some traffic.
I have no idea about legal jobs, but the schools are great in the 89052 and 89012 zipcodes.

[lvmensch]

I would work out the job situation before I got too enamored with LV. There are some reasonable jobs in the legal field but they may prove inaccessible to an outsider. It tends to be a community where a lot of people know each other and move around by personal contacts.

For access to the downtown legal district you would want to end up in Summerlin. You can perfectly well live anywhere in LV and get there in 45 minutes 95% of the time. Summerlin however has better access to that downtown area and allows you to avoid the worst of the commuter bottlenecks. Good LV rule is avoid any commute that forces you to go through the strip area on 15.

[robojester]

or just take the surface streets they are often faster .

[Camaro5]

I work in the legal group of large online company and manage our intellectual property, litigation, insurance, and marketing. I will be retired when we move to LV next year but have looked into legal work there.

Some practice areas have more jobs available than others. Personal injury and other litigation seems to have the most and a lot of those jobs are with smaller firms. You will also see openings for corporate law and real estate. Some specialized fields, like intellectual property, have things pop up now and then, but not too much really. I had a chance to join Caesar's legal group doing their IP work but didn't take it.

If you haven't done so, try talking to one of the legal recruiters in LV. Many companies and firms use them and they often have the better jobs. You can also do a search and find the web sites for the bigger firms in town. They often post job openings there. Good luck!

[CGarrett]

Originally Posted by Camaro5

I work in the legal group of large online company and manage our intellectual property, litigation, insurance, and marketing. I will be retired when we move to LV next year but have looked into legal work there.

Some practice areas have more jobs available than others. Personal injury and other litigation seems to have the most and a lot of those jobs are with smaller firms. You will also see openings for corporate law and real estate. Some specialized fields, like intellectual property, have things pop up now and then, but not too much really. I had a chance to join Caesar's legal group doing their IP work but didn't take it.

If you haven't done so, try talking to one of the legal recruiters in LV. Many companies and firms use them and they often have the better jobs. You can also do a search and find the web sites for the bigger firms in town. They often post job openings there. Good luck!

Thank you for sharing your experience. I will not be moving out to LV for another 6-9 months, so in the meantime I just monitor sources such as LinkedIn, Glassdoor and Craigslist. You are correct that personal injury or real estate legal positions seem to dominate the field, but I have seen a few positions for the casinos and other fields of law. At least for the moment, it appears that there are enough openings for me to feel confident that I will be able to obtain a job. I'll have the financial means to allow myself time to find work, and positions that usually require college degrees, certification and experience usually take longer for firms to fill. There aren't as many qualified candidates to fill the positions. It is not unusual for my current firm to take a couple months of interviews before finding someone with the right qualifications.