William Wilson
Arbitration Specialist — BMA Law
Summerlin neighborhood of Las Vegas, Nevada
Education
J.D., UNLV William S. Boyd School of Law. B.S. in Hospitality Management, University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Member of the Gaming Law Society and competed in the school’s client counseling competition. Focused coursework on contract remedies and commercial negotiations.
Experience
15 years in hospitality dispute resolution and service contract enforcement. Started at Thornton & Myles, a Las Vegas commercial litigation firm, representing hotel operators, gaming vendors, and event companies in contract disputes for six years. Spent two years at Barrera Conrad International, a small practice handling service agreement disputes between Las Vegas venue operators and international event production companies. Joined BMA Law to focus on arbitration — the hospitality industry’s need for fast, confidential resolution made it the right fit. Has worked on more than 140 hospitality and service contract arbitration matters — hotel management agreement disputes, event contract cancellations, gaming vendor arbitration, and convention services conflicts across the Las Vegas area.
Arbitration Focus Areas
Hospitality-related disputes, service contract arbitration, commercial agreement conflicts, force majeure disputes, and management fee enforcement. Most of his work involves disputes involving service delivery expectations and customer agreement enforcement.
Bar Admission & Memberships
State Bar of Nevada. Member, American Arbitration Association; Clark County Bar Association; International Association of Hospitality Lawyers.
Publications
Published in the Nevada Lawyer and the Cornell Hospitality Quarterly on hospitality dispute resolution, service contract trends, and force majeure enforceability.
Community Involvement
Pro bono mediator through the Clark County Pro Bono Project. Serves on the advisory board of the Nevada Hospitality Workers Legal Aid Fund.
Based in the Summerlin neighborhood of Las Vegas, Nevada. Plays mid-stakes no-limit hold’em in Vegas cardrooms 2-3 nights weekly. Enjoys urban sketching and watercolor painting during travels. Joins Magic: The Gathering draft events and is learning acoustic guitar. Follows the Las Vegas Raiders.
A Case That Stayed With William
One of the more complex matters William handled involved a convention services company in 2023 that lost a $1.8 million contract when a hotel operator cancelled three weeks before a 4,000-person event citing force majeure due to a “staffing emergency.” During the same period, the hotel was simultaneously booking two other events of similar size. The arbitration took five months. The services company recovered $1.2 million — the full contract value minus costs the company saved by not performing — plus $180,000 in consequential damages for equipment rentals that could not be cancelled.
What Shaped His Approach
William credits a gaming law attorney at Thornton & Myles who told him during his first week that in Las Vegas, the contract is only as good as the relationship behind it. Arbitration works in hospitality because it resolves the dispute without destroying the relationship. William did not fully understand that principle until his third year of practice, when a client told him that winning an arbitration had saved a $4 million annual vendor relationship that litigation would have ended.
Where He Draws the Line
William refused a $50,000 engagement in 2023 to represent a venue operator who wanted to use an arbitration clause to prevent a vendor from publicly discussing legitimate safety concerns about the property — specifically, electrical code violations in an event space. William told the operator that the clause was unenforceable and that attempting to enforce it would make things worse. The operator found another attorney. Six months later, the code violations made the news.
Building Something That Lasts
Beyond individual cases, William has developed a force majeure analysis framework in 2022 specifically for hospitality contracts that distinguishes between genuine impossibility and commercial inconvenience — a distinction many standard hotel contracts fail to make. The framework has been used in 35+ matters and was presented at the 2024 International Association of Hospitality Lawyers annual conference.
The Path to Law
William worked as a hotel night auditor through all three years of law school at UNLV Boyd — 11pm to 7am shifts, then classes starting at 9am. He slept four hours a night for three years and graduated with a 3.1 GPA. The job taught him more about how hospitality contracts actually function in practice than any textbook — because at 3am, when a guest disputes a charge, the contract is the last thing anyone reads.
Beyond the Practice
William helped establish the Nevada Hospitality Workers Legal Aid Fund in 2020 and serves on its advisory board. The fund has connected over 600 displaced hospitality workers with pro bono legal resources since the pandemic, with a focus on wage claims and contract disputes. Annual fundraising has grown from $12,000 in 2020 to $85,000 in 2025.
How He Works
William maintains a policy of meeting every new hospitality client at their property or venue rather than his office — even when the drive is ninety minutes each way. Understanding the physical operation is essential to understanding the dispute. A hotel lobby, a kitchen, a loading dock — each one tells him something a contract cannot.
William spent two weeks in 2023 shadowing an event production team during setup for a 6,000-person convention at the Las Vegas Convention Center. He watched load-in, rigging, AV setup, catering staging, and teardown. The experience — understanding the operational timeline pressures that make a three-week cancellation devastating — fundamentally changed how he evaluates damages in hospitality disputes.
Practice Notes
His approach leans toward quick resolution — getting to a decision point before costs compound. William has particular depth in service contracts. A common mistake William sees: service expectations.
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