On March 12, the Tax Committee hosted a dinner at Blue Willow, a Chinese restaurant in midtown Manhattan. The Committee had an open discussion on various tax questions from attendees and future plans for the Tax Committee.
Attendees ranged from newcomer students to partners who were part of the original creation of the Tax Committee that provided a historic perspective on how and why the Committee was created. Future networking and outreach activities were discussed as well as the sharing of career advice, some current thorny substantive questions encountered at work and various ways to substantively enhance one’s practice.
On July 11th, 2023, AABANY’s Students Outreach Committee organized a Students Meet Firms event, connecting law students with attorneys from Groombridge, Wu, Baughman & Stone. (Groombridge, Wu) The panelists included Josephine Young, Partner at Groombridge, Wu; Karen King, Partner at Morvillo Abramowitz Grand Iason & Anello PC; Ben Hsu, Associate at Groombridge, Wu; and Chih-Wei Wu, Associate at Groombridge, Wu. Serving as the moderator was Jennifer Wu, Partner at the firm and Co-Chair of AABANY’s Women’s Committee. The event took place at the Groombridge, Wu office located in New York City and online via Zoom.
The setting was intimate and informal, with Jennifer fielding questions from attendees, which included sharing personal stories and discussing the significance of being assertive in the legal profession. Jennifer emphasized learning to recognize your own voice and not allow others to walk over you. The conversation also delved into topics such as workplace racism, the advantages and disadvantages of owning a firm versus working for one, the training process, the life of an associate, and the value of learning from mistakes.
One notable piece of advice from Jennifer was to seek out a firm that allows for mistakes and provides opportunities for growth through learning from them. The attendees shared insightful questions, such as when does making mistakes become unacceptable, the experiences of being an Asian American woman while climbing the corporate ladder and making partnership, and the pros and cons of practicing law in a post-COVID world.
Overall, the panel provided comprehensive responses to a range of attendee questions, spanning from the experiences of litigation lawyers to insights into achieving partnership status at a major law firm or running one’s own.
Thank you to our speakers for sharing their insights and to the Student Outreach Committee for organizing this wonderful and informative event. To read more about other Students Meet Firms events, including Cleary Gottlieb and Kirkland & Ellis, click on the links to the blog posts. To learn more about the Student Outreach Committee, please click here.
Grace Jamgochian was elected to Partner at Shearman & Sterling on June 16th, 2021. She currently practices in Shearman’s New York office and, as stated in the Shearman & Sterling announcement, she “represents all aspects of mergers, acquisitions and investments for corporates and private capital investors. Her experience includes domestic and cross-border public company mergers, complex private transactions, and activism/defense, particularly in the TMT, infrastructure, and consumer products sectors.” Grace has also been a member of AABANY since 2019 and she currently serves as a Vice Chair of the Women’s Committee.
Please join AABANY in congratulating Grace Jamgochian and wishing her much success in all her future endeavors.
NAPABA is proud to join the newly established Alliance for Asian American Justice (“The Alliance”) as part of a coalition of leading AAPI advocacy organizations, Fortune 1000 General Counsel, and over 40 law firms in a national initiative designed to ensure that victims of anti-Asian crime, hatred, and bigotry are able to access pro bono legal services. The work of The Alliance leverages NAPABA’s existing intake efforts on hate crimes and hate incident reporting, and bolsters NAPABA’s leadership in providing victims, community based organizations, and community leaders with the information they need, in the language they understand, through its groundbreaking collection of hate crimes reporting toolkits, which were developed in partnership with the APIA Health Forum and translated into 24 different AAPI languages, the largest collection of its kind. For more on The Alliance, please click here.
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The National Asian Pacific American Bar Association (NAPABA) represents the interests of approximately 50,000 legal professionals and nearly 90 national, state, and local Asian Pacific American bar associations. NAPABA is a leader in addressing civil rights issues confronting Asian Pacific American communities. Through its national network, NAPABA provides a strong voice for increased diversity of the federal and state judiciaries, advocates for equal opportunity in the workplace, works to eliminate hate crimes and anti-immigrant sentiment, and promotes the professional development of people of color in the legal profession.
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.”
Please join us in congratulating AABANY member Lisa S. Lim, who has joined Akerman LLP as a Partner within the Real Estate Practice Group in the New York office. Lisa focuses her practice in real estate finance and development, economic development, and affordable housing. To learn more about Lisa’s practice, click on the link in the title.
Karen Lim, AABANY Director and founding co-chair of the Intellectual Property Committee, was recently named a Partner at Fross Zelnick. Please join us in congratulating her on this great achievement. The full text of the firm’s press release announcing Karen’s elevation can be found by following the link in the title.
WE ARE PLEASED TO ANNOUNCE THAT KAREN LIM has become a partner of the firm. Karen’s practice focuses on the selection, clearance, prosecution, maintenance and enforcement of trademarks in the U.S. and globally; managing worldwide trademark portfolios; and preparing agreements and licenses pertaining to intellectual property.
Congratulations to Women’s Committee Co-Chair Sapna Palla on her joining Wiggin and Dana as Partner in the Intellectual Practice Group in the firm’s New York Office. For more details, follow the link in the title to read the press release.
Nassira Hamdi was supposed to walk out of an immigration court in Federal Plaza this week with an approval for a green card. But that court, like 14 others across the U.S., is closed due to the shutdown.
Tsui Yee, Partner at Guerrero Yee and Co-Chair of the Immigration and Nationality Law Committee, was recently quoted in this WNYC news article on the impact of the government shutdown on pending immigration cases. Tsui was quoted as follows:
In New York State, over 50,000 cases are currently pending. The Department of Justice, which oversees immigration courts, is currently only continuing hearings for immigrants who are detained. Hamdi’s attorney, Tsui Yee said several of her other clients’ appointments have also been canceled.
“We have been waiting for this day for months, if not years,” she said. “Each of my clients’ cases took, I would say on average, three to four years to make its way through the entire court process. … So it’s just very frustrating.”
