When Hutchison & Steffen opened its doors in downtown Las Vegas in 1996, the internet was a novelty, remote work was rare, and many business owners were still weighing whether to form an LLC. The law has not remained static since. Three decades later, the questions clients bring us have changed in ways we could not have fully anticipated – and so have the answers.
Here is a look at some of the most significant legal shifts we have witnessed across the life of this Firm.
In the mid-1990s, the LLC was still relatively new. Nevada had adopted LLC legislation, but corporate structures – C-corps and S-corps – remained the default for most business owners. Many attorneys, including the ones advising small businesses, were still working through the nuances of pass-through taxation and operating agreements.
Today, the LLC is the dominant structure for closely held businesses in Nevada and across the country. Its flexibility in management, taxation elections, and liability protection made it the vehicle of choice for entrepreneurs at every level. But the evolution did not stop there. Single-member LLCs, series LLCs, and sophisticated operating agreements with carefully negotiated buy-sell provisions have introduced layers of planning complexity that simply did not exist in 1996. What was once a simple formation question is now a full planning conversation.
In 1996, employment law was still largely a framework built around the physical workplace. Handbooks were printed. Policies were posted on bulletin boards. The employer-employee relationship was, for most businesses, a local, in-person arrangement. The last decade – and especially the years since 2020 – turned that framework inside out. Remote and hybrid work created multistate employment exposure for businesses that had never considered it before. A Nevada employer with two remote employees in California and Colorado may now carry compliance obligations in three states simultaneously: wage and hour laws, leave requirements, noncompete enforceability, and tax withholding.
The National Labor Relations Board’s evolving positions on independent contractor classification, the expansion of protected categories under federal and state anti-discrimination law, and the growing scrutiny of noncompete agreements have collectively made employment law one of the most active and consequential practice areas for businesses of all sizes. What employers could once manage informally now requires documented policies, legal review, and in many cases, proactive counsel before problems arise.
In 1996, a data breach was not a recognized category of legal risk. Today, it is one of the most significant exposures a business can face. Nevada’s data privacy law requires businesses that collect personal information from Nevada residents to provide opt-out rights and maintain reasonable security procedures. Federal sector-specific regulations – HIPAA for healthcare, Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act for financial services – layer additional obligations on top of state requirements.
Beyond privacy, the rise of social media and online platforms has reshaped defamation law, cybercrimes, intellectual property enforcement, and the nature of business disputes. The legal issues that arrive on our doorstep today would have been difficult to describe in 1996 because the technology that created them did not yet exist.
The legal landscape will continue to shift. Artificial intelligence is already raising new questions about intellectual property ownership, efficiency versus reliability, liability for AI-generated decisions, and the enforceability of AI-drafted contracts. The law will adapt, as it always has.
What does not change is the value of having counsel who knows your business, understands the current environment, and is positioned to move when the law moves. That has been the Firm’s commitment since 1996. It remains our commitment today.
