Nevada Judiciary

Justice Kristina Pickering grew up in northern Nevada. She graduated from Reno High School, was named Presidential Scholar from Nevada and National Merit Scholar, and earned a four year scholarship to Yale University. She graduated with honors from Yale and went on to law school at Georgetown University and the University of California, Davis, where she served on the law review and was elected to the legal honor society, Order of the Coif, graduating among the top five students in her class.

Justice Pickering began her career as law clerk for United States District Judge Bruce R. Thompson in Reno. She then entered private law practice with Lionel Sawyer & Collins, where she became a partner in 1985. Justice Pickering moved from Reno to Las Vegas in 1992. She and her husband, Steve Morris, then founded their own law firm, Morris Pickering & Peterson. She handled complex civil litigation at both the trial and appellate level for 28 years before her election to the Nevada Supreme Court in 2008.

Justice Pickering has been an elected member of the American Law Institute since 1987. She served as an advisor on the ALI’s Federal Judicial Code Revision Project and as a consultative group member on the Restatement of the Law Governing Lawyers. At the time she joined the Nevada Supreme Court, she held top rankings in Martindale-Hubbell, Best Lawyers in America, and Super Lawyers in business litigation and class actions.

Justice Pickering and her husband own a small ranch in central Nevada, near Belmont. They have two grown sons, with families of their own. Justice Pickering is an accomplished athlete who has run the Las Vegas full and half marathons and continues to run regularly, usually with one or more of her border collies in tow.

Over the course of her legal career, Justice Pickering served in a variety of positions to improve the legal profession and court system in Nevada. She was a member of the Nevada Board of Bar Examiners from 1992 to 2007 and is a former Nevada Supreme Court settlement judge. She also served on committees at the state and national levels addressing court rules, lawyer ethics and professional conduct. She was an adjunct faculty member at the William S. Boyd School of Law at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas in 2000 and 2002.