Sam and Lexy Lionel
Samuel Lionel has a long and illustrious history of bolstering Nevada’s legal community. He and his wife, Lexy Lionel, have created a philanthropic legacy to support generations of legal scholars in perpetuity at the William S. Boyd School of Law at UNLV.
The Lionels established the Reid-Lionel Scholarship Endowment in 2019 through a $1 million gift to UNLV’s Boyd School of Law. The award recognizes the extraordinary contributions of former U.S. Sen. Harry Reid and Sam Lionel.
Previously, the Lionels funded the Samuel Lionel Professorship in Intellectual Property, a position held by Boyd School of Law professor Marketa Trimble in 2020, as well as the LaFrance-Trimble Award, named for Professor Trimble and UNLV Boyd colleague Mary LaFrance. Before it closed in 2015, the law firm Lionel Sawyer & Collins, of which Sam Lionel was a founding partner, funded and named the law school’s Nevada Law Journal Room.
Attorney Sam Lionel moved to Las Vegas and passed the Nevada bar in 1954. He earned a law degree from St. John’s University in New York, served in the U.S. Army in Europe in WWII, and taught law at West Point — all before moving west. He partnered with former Nevada governor Grant Sawyer and Nevada Supreme Court Justice Jon Collins to create Lionel Sawyers & Collins. For nearly 50 years, the iconic law firm employed hundreds of attorneys and represented Nevada’s most influential clients.
Known as the “Dean of the Nevada Bar,” Sam served for 30 years on the Nevada Board of Bar Examiners. He has been an unfaltering supporter of the Boyd School of Law since the school’s inception in 1998, and was awarded an Honorary Doctorate by UNLV in 2013.
Lexy Lionel is the founder and owner of the award-winning company, Nannies & Housekeepers USA. The Las Vegas-based firm has served corporate and individual clients since its founding in 2000, and was named Agency of the Year by the national Association of Premier Nanny Agencies. Raised in Minnesota, Lexy moved to Las Vegas from California in 1988. She and Sam married in 2013.
“UNLV was important to Sam and it became important to me,” said Lexy, whose enthusiasm for UNLV’s Boyd School of Law was cinched when Dan Hamilton, a former law school dean, invited her and her husband to join him on the podium for the school’s annual scholarship awards ceremony.
“When you can see the face of someone whose life you have really impacted, the reward is endless,” she said.
“The law school has come a long way,” added Sam. “We’re proud of it, and many of us remain dedicated to its future success.”