Craig D. Friedel

Craig Friedel is a partner with the firm, where his practice focuses primarily on estate planning, asset protection, and trust administration. He also maintains an active trust and estate litigation practice. Craig believes the best estate planning comes from long-term relationships. He takes the time to understand each client’s family, business, and goals, and he stays involved as their circumstances change across years and generations, working alongside their other trusted advisors.

Craig advises individuals, families, and business owners on the design and implementation of sophisticated estate plans. His work includes revocable and irrevocable trusts, dynasty trusts, Nevada asset protection trusts, directed trust structures, charitable planning, business succession planning, and gift, estate, and generation-skipping transfer tax planning. Craig regularly serves as a long-term trusted advisor to family offices and Nevada trust companies. He works as part of a team with clients’ accountants, wealth advisors, and other professionals to make sure their legal, tax, and investment strategies work together. That collaborative approach lets him address trust structure, fiduciary administration, and governance comprehensively, and resolve complex issues before they become disputes. He also regularly assists fiduciaries and families with trust modifications and decantings.

Craig’s litigation experience includes representing heirs, beneficiaries, private and professional fiduciaries in disputes involving breach of fiduciary duty, the validity of trust decantings and asset protection trust, lack of capacity, undue influence, duress, improper distributions, etc. That experience lets him draft estate plans with a practical understanding of how they are challenged and how to make them hold up to ensure the decedent’s wishes are honored.

Craig graduated cum laude from Brigham Young University. He then attended the UNLV William S. Boyd School of Law on a full three-year academic scholarship. While in law school, he served as an extern for former Probate Commissioner Wesley Yamashita. Craig has been repeatedly recognized by Nevada Business Legal Elite (Best Up and Coming Attorneys), Best Lawyers: Ones to Watch, and Super Lawyers: Rising Stars.

Craig is a third-generation Nevadan and was Valedictorian at Coronado HS in Henderson, NV. He loves spending time with his wife and four children, college sports, and going on canyoneering adventures.

EDUCATION

• William S. Boyd School of Law, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Nevada
  • Juris Doctorate – 2015
  • Honors: CALI Awards: Legal Writing, Transactional Drafting, and Statutory Interpretation
  • Honors: Dean’s List, 2014–2015
  • Honors: International & Comparative Human Rights Law Practicum in New Delhi, India
• Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah
  • Bachelor of Science – 2012
  • Honors: cum laude
  • Major: Biology

CLASSES/SEMINARS

• Presenter, Advanced Estate Administration: A Nevada Guide, Nevada Business Institute, December 2022

PROFESSIONAL ASSOCIATIONS

• Clark County Bar Association
• State Bar of Nevada
• State Bar of Nevada, Trusts and Estates Section, Rules Committee
• State Bar of Nevada, Southern Nevada Disciplinary Board
• American Bar Association, Sections of Real Property, Trust and Estates
• The Howard D. McKibbin American Inn of Court, Associate
• Boy Scouts of America (Eagle Scout)

PUBLISHED WORKS

• Eighth Judicial District Court Civil Practice “Cheat Sheet” – 2026 Update, Communique Magazine, March 2026
• Error Not Found: SB404 Refines Nevada’s Trust and Estate Laws, Nevada Lawyer, December 2025
• Private Wealth 2025 | USA Nevada, Law and Practice, Chambers and Partners, July 2025
• Eighth Judicial District Court Civil Practice “Cheat Sheet,” Communique Magazine – 2021 Update, May 2021
• Eighth Judicial District Court Civil Practice “Cheat Sheet,” Communique Magazine, May 2017
• The Mentally Ill Who Kill Go Unreported Still: Exploration of Potential Nevada NICS Reporting Reform, Nevada Law Journal, 2015