496 THE ADVOCATE
VOL. 80 PART 4 JULY 2022
as a real estate attorney. Later in law school, and informed by his experience
as a student in the Community Development Clinic, he discovered
that he could practise sophisticated law and policy in underserved communities
that needed resources.
Having taken an interest in community development work, Ngai moved
to Baltimore, Maryland, where he practised law in a small, non-profit organization.
The organization served as general counsel to communities receiving
federal Empowerment Zone grants to redress social and economic
inequities, and Ngai wore many hats as community organizer, community
lawyer and small business developer. Transformation of communities does
not happen overnight, and the scale of the work in many ways was both
massive and intimate. He might be working on the demolition and redevelopment
of high-rise public housing one day and attending an evening community
meeting in the basement of a row house the next day.
After a year, Ngai switched to practising community development law
and teaching students at the University of Baltimore. He joined the Community
Development Clinic, whose clients included neighbourhood nonprofit
developers, communities organized as non-profit corporations, and
individuals with business and real estate development ideas. It was here
that Ngai began thinking about a career as a professor. He enjoyed both the
experiential learning that he delivered through the legal clinic and
researching and writing about community development projects across the
United States. It was both the challenge of those projects and the opportunities
they provided that appealed to him. Two opportunities that stood out
among others included the possibility of creating meaningful, sustained
progress in the lives of the residents of these communities and the possibility
of inspiring law students to continue community development work in
their own careers.
When a teaching opportunity presented itself at the William S. Boyd
School of Law at the University of Nevada, Ngai moved to Las Vegas without
ever having been there before. When he first arrived, he found himself
experiencing culture shock as he drove down the Las Vegas strip. His first
thought was that the casino developers had lost the opportunity of blending
the properties together in a coherent land use scheme. He soon discarded
this traditional land use planning view, realizing that casino proprietors valued
the unique theme of each property, designed to both entice and retain
patrons.
Dean Pindell’s association with the William S. Boyd School of Law would
last the next 21 years. He started as an assistant professor in 2000 and
became a professor in 2008. He researched and taught courses in property