Wesley F. Yamashita is a native Nevadan, having been born in Las Vegas and raised in the Moapa Valley. He attended Kindergarten through High School at the Moapa Valley Schools in the Clark County School District. He graduated as a co-Valedictorian of his class at Moapa Valley High School. He attended college at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, graduating with a Bachelor’s Degree in accounting, cum laude. He attended BYU’s J. Reuben Clark School of Law where he received the American Jurisprudence Award in Banking Law and the class award in taxation. While in the course of time at law school, he also completed the requirements for his Certificate of Public Accounting (CPA).
Wes Yamashita was admitted to the State Bar of Nevada in 1986. He practiced for 22 years in private practice, first with the firm of Mills and Gibson, then the firm of Clark Greene and Associates, with practice emphases in the areas of estate planning, probate and taxation. He was a respected presenter of Nevada CLE programs on the topic of probate law.
In 2008, Wes Yamashita was selected by the District Court Judges to serve as the Probate Commissioner of the Eighth Judicial District Court. In 2014, Wes Yamashita, as the Probate Commissioner, worked in concert with members of the Probate Bar in a re-writing of Part IV of the Rules of Practice of the Eighth Judicial Court which was ultimately accepted and approved by both the Judges of the Eighth Judicial District Court and the Supreme Court of the State of Nevada. Wes Yamashita served diligently his entire tenure as the Probate Commissioner with integrity and efficiency, handling the extremely busy Probate Department, with over 45,000 new cases being opened during that time.
BYU’s J. Reuben Clark School of Law