Public Access to Nevada Court Records

The State of Nevada is home to over 3.1 million people and has an area of 110,572 square miles. The state capital is Carson City and the most populous single city in the state is Las Vegas. However, almost 75% of Nevada’s population lives in Clark County, which includes the Las Vegas-Paradise metropolitan area. This area, also known as the Las Vegas Statistical Metropolitan Area, includes the cities of Las Vegas, Henderson, and North Las Vegas.

The Nevada state court system has over 500,000 cases filed, heard, and processed each year. The Nevada Courts are made up of trial courts, a Court of Appeals, and a Supreme Court.

The Nevada Supreme Court is the state's highest court and is composed of seven justices, including one Chief Justice. The Supreme Court reviews and rules on appeals from the trial courts, determining whether legal or procedural errors occurred in court cases and whether verdicts and judgments were fair and appropriate. The Nevada Supreme Court can assign cases to the Nevada Court of Appeals, allowing the Supreme Court to speed up the appeals process and retain cases of first impression or public policy.

Supreme Court of Nevada Justices are elected in nonpartisan elections to six year terms. Justices may run again to remain on the Court when their term expires. To be eligible to be a justice on the Nevada Supreme Court, a person must be at least 25 years old; be licensed and admitted to practice law in Nevada, and have been licensed and admitted to practice law in the United States for at least 15 years, including at least two years in Nevada; be a qualified elector; and have been a Nevada resident for at least two years preceding the election.

The number of matters brought before the Nevada Supreme Court each year averages around 1,300. The Nevada Supreme Court has been involved with many important cases in U.S. jurisprudence, including Crandall v. State of Nevada, Gentile v. State Bar of Nevada, and Anderson v. Eighth Judicial District Court.

Established in 2015, the Nevada Court of Appeals is the state’s intermediate appellate court and has locations in Carson City and Las Vegas. The Nevada Court of Appeals is assigned cases by the Nevada Supreme Court, using a deflective model, which allows the appellate process to work quickly and efficiently. The Supreme Court tends to retain cases of first impression or those relating to public policy, while assigning the rest of the proceedings to the Court of Appeals.

The Nevada Court of Appeals is composed of three judges, who are elected to six year terms. These judges may run for reelection at the expiration of their terms. The Chief Justice of the Nevada Supreme Court appoints a Chief Judge for the Court of Appeals for an initial term of two years, with subsequent terms being four years long.

To be eligible to be a judge on the Nevada Court of Appeals, a person must be at least 25 years old; be licensed and admitted to practice law in Nevada, and have been licensed and admitted to practice law in the United States for at least 15 years, including at least two years in Nevada; be a qualified elector; and have been a state resident for at least two years preceding the election.

Nevada has three types of trial courts: District Courts, Justice Courts, and Municipal Courts.

The Nevada District Courts are courts of general jurisdiction where criminal cases, civil cases involving more than $15,000, family cases, and juvenile cases are decided. Nevada has 17 District Courts, served by 82 District Judges. Appeals of District Court cases go to the state Supreme Court.

Judges in the Nevada District Courts are elected in nonpartisan elections to serve six year terms. To remain on the court, they must run for re-election after their term expires. Each District Court that includes a county with a population of at least 100,000 in its judicial district selects a Chief Judge by peer vote. The Chief Judge’s term is two years.

To be eligible to serve as a District Court Judge, a person must be at least 25 years old; be licensed and admitted to practice law in Nevada, and have been licensed and admitted to practice law in the United States for at least 10 years, including at least two years in Nevada; be a qualified elector; and have been a state resident for at least two years preceding the election.

The Nevada Justice Courts have limited jurisdiction over certain types of civil and criminal cases. These courts primarily handle preliminary felony and gross misdemeanor matters, misdemeanor and traffic matters, small claims disputes, evictions, and other civil matters involving less than $15,000. Decisions in these courts may be appealed to the District Courts.

Nevada has 40 Justice Courts that are served by 68 Justices of the Peace. Nine Justices of the Peace also serve as Municipal Court judges.

Judges on the Justice Courts are called Justices of the Peace and are elected to six year terms in nonpartisan elections. To be eligible to be a Justice of the Peace, a person must be a qualified elector; have a high school diploma or its equivalent; and never have been removed from judicial office by the Commission on Judicial Discipline. In townships with populations of at least 100,000, Justices of the Peace must be licensed and admitted to practice law in Nevada.

The Municipal Courts are courts of limited jurisdiction that manage cases involving violations of traffic and misdemeanor ordinances that occur within the city limits of incorporated municipalities. Decisions in these courts may be appealed to the District Courts.

Nevada has 17 Municipal Courts that are served by 30 Municipal Court Judges. As previously mentioned, nine of those Municipal Court Judges also serve as Justices of the Peace.

Municipal Judges in Nevada may be appointed or elected, and terms of office are set by city charter or ordinance. To be eligible to serve as a Municipal Judge, a person must be a citizen of Nevada; have been a resident of the city for at least one year, unless otherwise specified by a special charter; and be a qualified elector within the city.

Created in 1976, the Nevada Commission on Judicial Discipline investigates allegations of judicial misconduct in office, violations of the Revised Nevada Code of Judicial Conduct, or disability of judges. The Commission may decide to take disciplinary actions or issue sanctions.

The Commission on Judicial Discipline has seven members. The members of the Commission include: two judges appointed by the Nevada Supreme Court, two attorneys appointed by the Board of Governors of the State Bar of Nevada, and three lay persons appointed by the Governor of the State of Nevada.

• Over 2,400 appellate cases were filed in the Nevada Court system in 2020.
• The Nevada Courts have a team of over 80 credentialed interpreters who help remove the language barrier to accessing the legal system.
• The majority of cases in the District Courts tend to involve family law matters.
• In 2020, the Nevada Trial Courts saw 132,780 criminal case filings.

UniCourt is your single source for state and federal court records, offering comprehensive court coverage and the most complete and accurate dataset available.

Everyday of the week, UniCourt collects all of the newly filed civil and criminal cases in the Nevada Courts we cover and lets you search through those new case filings in our CrowdSourced Library™. You can also use UniCourt to track state court litigation and get real-time case alerts sent directly to your inbox. Additionally, UniCourt empowers you to download court documents on-demand without ever having to login to a government court database, and gives you unlimited access to download millions of free state and federal court documents in our CrowdSourced Library™.

UniCourt provides you with access to court records from the Clark County Courts, which is one of the busiest courts in the state.

Additionally, UniCourt gives you access to court records for federal courts across the state of Nevada, including the U.S. District Court for the District of Nevada, the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Nevada, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

UniCourt’s industry-leading Legal Data APIs provide Enterprise users with on-demand, bulk access to structured data from Nevada state and federal courts. Our Legal Data as a Service (LDaaS) collects, organizes, standardizes, and normalizes court data from Nevada state courts and all federal courts, and makes it readily available via our UniCourt Enterprise API for business development, competitive intelligence, litigation strategy, and docket management.