Day: April 10, 2020

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PRESS RELEASE: IN THE CONTINUING EFFORT TO PROMOTE DIVERSITY WITHIN THE LEGAL PROFESSION, THE ASIAN AMERICAN BAR ASSOCIATION OF NEW YORK CONGRATULATES THREE PARTICIPANTS OF ITS LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM WHO HAVE BEEN ELEVATED TO PARTNERSHIP AT TOP LAW FIRMS

NEW YORK — April 10, 2020. The Asian American Bar Association of New York (AABANY) congratulates Luna Ngan Barrington of Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP on her elevation to partnership and Jeffrey Mok of Fish & Richardson P.C. on his elevation to principal, on January 1, 2020. Congratulations to Dohyun Kim of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP for her elevation to partnership on April 1, 2020.

These three AABANY members are all proud participants of AABANY’s Leadership Development Program (ALDP). Established in 2018, ALDP is a six-month long interactive leadership training course aimed at helping AABANY members who are senior attorneys at law firms and companies navigate the promotion process within their respective organizations. According to A Portrait of Asian Americans in the Law by Yale Law School and the National Asian Pacific American Bar Association, Asian Americans have a 3.65 ratio of associates to partners—significantly higher than the 1.01 ratio for Caucasians—and the highest ratio of any racial or ethnic group for more than a decade. Asian Americans also have the highest attrition rates at law firms. Although Asian Americans comprise 6.7% of all attorneys in the Vault/MCCA 2014 survey, they comprise 8.9% of attorneys who left their firms that year. ALDP addresses these issues of chronic Asian American underrepresentation at leadership levels through its law firm partnership track program, which is focused on cultivating a selected group of Asian Pacific American (APA) law firm associates on the partnership track. In 2019, ALDP expanded its program to include an in-house counsel track.  ALDP is unique in its small set of qualified participants and its focus on soft skills, accountability, and the AABANY community.  AABANY President Sapna Palla is a co-founder of ALDP.

Luna Barrington is a Partner in the Complex Commercial Litigation practice of Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP. She represents clients in consumer class actions, antitrust litigation, commercial contract disputes and multi-district litigations, and has extensive experience taking cases from the pleading stage through to trial. Prior to joining Weil, Ms. Barrington served as a law clerk to the Honorable Richard M. Berman, United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. Ms. Barrington received her J.D. from the University of California, Hastings College of the Law, where she was a member of the Hastings Business Law Journal.

Jeffrey Mok, a Principal at Fish & Richardson P.C., focuses his practice on litigation and counseling for patent, trademark, copyright, and trade secrets. His work spans a variety of technical areas, including wireless communications, semiconductor technology, automotive technology, financial services, software, and medical devices. He has represented clients in federal courts across the country and before the U.S. International Trade Commission. He received his J.D. from New York University School of Law in 2012 and his B.S. in electrical engineering, with a minor in computer science, from Columbia University in 2007.

Dohyun Kim, a Partner at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP, focuses on mergers and acquisitions, corporate governance, private equity, securities and general corporate law matters. Ms. Kim regularly advises public and private companies in a variety of U.S. and cross-border corporate matters, including acquisitions and dispositions, investments, joint ventures, restructurings and financings. She has represented clients across a wide variety of industries, including consumer products, pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, technology and communications. Ms. Kim received her J.D. from the New York University School of Law, where she was the Senior Executive Editor for the New York University Law Review.

“AABANY congratulates Luna Barrington and Dohyun Kim on their elevation to partnership and Jeffrey Mok on his elevation to principal and recognizes them as outstanding participants in AABANY’s Leadership Development Program,” states AABANY President Sapna Palla. “A Portrait of Asian Americans in the Law tells us that although Asian Americans comprise 7.05% of all attorneys in the Vault/MCCA survey of 2015 data, they held only 2.09% of seats on executive management committees, 2.32% of seats on partner review committees, and 3.78% of seats on associate review committees. Furthermore, the 2016 Law Firm Diversity Benchmarking Report from the New York City Bar Association shows that Asian/Pacific Islander attorneys make up only 3% of all leadership positions within New York’s law firms. AABANY is committed to helping raise these numbers through ALDP. We are extremely grateful for the leadership and dedication of ALDP’s faculty members and organizers for making this innovative and impactful program possible. We especially thank and acknowledge our sponsors and our members for their support of ALDP’s mission to empower qualified senior attorneys in their respective firms and fields. We look forward to sharing more of ALDP’s continued success in the future.”

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NAPABA Webinar on Combating a History of Anti-Asian Discrimination: How to Protect the Asian American Community

A racist cartoon originally depicted in the publication, the San Francisco Wasp, in 1881. The cartoon was a parody of the Statue of Liberty and represented a growing fear of Asian immigrants within the United States

On Friday, April 3rd, the National Asian Pacific American Bar Association (NAPABA) hosted a webinar titled “Pandemic and Acts of Hate Against Asian Americans: From Past to Present.” The webinar traced the historical roots of Asian American discrimination related to disease and public health issues and presented solutions for the present in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

The webinar featured a panel which included Professor Jack Chin of UC Davis Law School, Matt Stevens of The New York Times’s Political News division, Harpreet Singh Mokha of the Department of Justice’s Community Relations Service, and Rahat N. Babar, Special Counsel, Office of the Governor of New Jersey. Chris M. Kwok, the NAPABA Dispute Resolution Committee Co-Chair and our very own AABANY Issues Committee Chair, helmed the panel as moderator. 

Professor Chin began by outlining the extensive history of anti-Asian discrimination within the United States. He focused on how discriminatory legislation at the state level in California and at the national level through the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 frequently correlated Asian American immigrants with disease. In particular, Professor Chin noted how San Francisco became a focal point of race-based efforts to control the bubonic plague in the early 1900s. Multiple political attempts were made to isolate and discriminate against Asians in the city which were repeatedly rebuffed by legal challenges such as Wong Wai v. Williamson and Jew Ho v. Williamson. Professor Chin underscored the ugly but recurring theme pushed in American politics about the “foreignness of germs.”

Following the professor’s historical account, Matt Stevens, an Asian American political reporter for The New York Times, noted the efforts that legislators are making to combat these acts of discrimination. Moreover, he noted the pervasive feeling of fear that permeates the Asian American community.

Harpreet Singh Mokha, National Program Manager for Muslim, Arab, Sikh, South Asian, and Hindu (MASSAH) issues at the Community Relations Service of the DOJ, explained the role and function of CRS during this pandemic. Established under Title X of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, CRS, frequently called “America’s Peacemakers,” works directly with communities facing conflict on racial, ethnic, gender, sexual orientation, religious, and disability issues. It has four primary functions: facilitating dialogue, mediating conflict, training community members, and providing consultation for methods of community assistance. Mr. Mokha noted that members of communities all across the country should be encouraged to make use of CRS’s resources and report hate crimes at their first occurrence. 

To wrap up the panel, Rahat Babar, Special Counsel for Litigation with the Office of the New Jersey Governor, echoed Mr. Mokha’s point to report hate crimes without hesitation. He noted a 2020 in-state report which found a 65% increase in bias incidents between 2018 and 2019 with 46% of those engaging in such bias incidents being minors. Thanks to this report, Governor Phil Murphy was able to set up a task force to explore why minors were engaging in such behavior. Mr. Babar notes that without a robust data set of incident or hate crime reports, lawmakers and community leaders will not be able to identify root problems or pose solutions. 

Overall, the panel outlined past and present cases of racial discrimination targeted towards the AAPI community. All panelists acknowledged the importance of speaking out during this time of uncertainty for the sake of protecting fellow community members both now and in the future. 

This event  reached the largest audience for a NAPABA webinar to date, with 160 registrants. The program stressed placing the events of today within historical understanding of America, engagement with our government institutions charged with enforcing our laws, and collaboration across civil society organizations. We at AABANY thank and acknowledge Chris Kwok for proposing this program to NAPABA and serving as moderator.

A racist cartoon published in San Francisco-based publication, The Wasp. The cartoon promoted then-common racist myths that Chinatown was riddled with disease.
A racist cartoon published in the illustrated San Francisco weekly “Thistleton’s Illustrated Jolly Giant” depicting San Francisco’s The Globe Hotel. The cartoon insinuates that the Globe Hotel secretly contained a “small pox hospital” and an “underground Chinese cemetery,” perpetuating racist stereotypes of the time.
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NY Daily News Publishes Op-Ed on Startling Rise in Anti-Asian Bias Incidents and Hate Crime Reports

On April 8, 2020, the New York Daily News published an op-ed entitled “Bias, group hate and the coronavirus pandemic,” authored by Deborah Lauter, Executive Director of the New York City Office for the Prevention of Hate Crimes, Carmelyn P. Malalis, Chair and Commissioner of the New York City Commission on Human Rights, and Bitta Mostofi, Commissioner of the Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs.

The op-ed highlights the startling increase of bias incidents and hate crimes related to COVID-19 being reported by Asians and Asian Americans across the country in recent weeks. It notes that during times of crisis, societies are susceptible to fear. In the current COVID-19 pandemic situation, that fear has manifested itself in the form of mistrust, hatred, and division on a national level. The authors point to several examples of similar societal reactions in history during times of national and international crises. They encouraged readers to learn from history’s mistakes and stressed the need to support the Chinese and other Asian communities that are being scapegoated and increasingly living in fear of being targeted in the current environment.

To read the full op-ed, click on the following link: https://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/ny-bias-group-hate-coronavirus-20200409-hocvcsn7orarvhruqoxxkay2my-story.html