Meet the Public Defender's Office

Jacob Sommer

Jacob Sommer, Esq.

Public Defender

Churchill County’s Public Defender, Jacob Sommer, Esq., has been a Nevada licensed attorney since 2007. 

Previous to joining the county in 2020, he practiced in his private firm representing clients for civil and criminal matters. He has extensive criminal defense experience for felony cases with penalties of lifetime imprisonment in addition to simple misdemeanor cases. Since 2012, he has been under contract to provide public defender services for Churchill County.

Sommer clerked for the Honorable David Huff in the Third Judicial District Court in Fallon for a year in the mid-2000s where he conducted legal research and drafted bench memorandums for review and evaluation while serving as courtroom bailiff.

He also has experience working for the Office of Federal Defender in Las Vegas where he assisted with in-depth, complicated legal research and writing appellate briefs to the Nevada Supreme Court, Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and the U.S. Supreme Court.

He attended the William S. Boyd School of Law at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas on full scholarship and graduated in 2006 with honors in clinical representation of juvenile defendants and legal writing while serving on the Dean’s Honor List.

Wright Noel
Emily Tunsil

Wright Noel, Esq.

Deputy Public Defender

Deputy Public Defender Wright Noel joined the Public Defender’s Office in 2020. 

Also a Nevada licensed attorney, he clerked for Judge Thomas Stockard at the Tenth Judicial Court in Fallon for a year after moving to Churchill County following his graduation from Brigham Young University Law School in 2019. 

His undergraduate work was completed at Southern Virginia University in 2016.



Emily Tunsil

Legal Secretary

Emily started as a legal assistant in the writ and research office at a family law firm in San Diego back in 2015. She then worked for a complex civil law firm doing construction defect cases before deciding to move back to Nevada to be closer to family.

She came over to the Public Defender's Office from Justice Court where she worked for a year.