NAPABA’s 2009 honorees discuss their accomplishments, the importance of mentoring, and the “model minority” myth.
The National Asian Pacific American Bar Association (NAPABA) unveiled the 2009 list of its Best Lawyers Under 40 at its national convention in Boston last November. This distinguished group of Asian Pacific American (APA) attorneys is comprised of solo practitioners, law firm attorneys, in-house counsel, and attorneys at public agencies.
“NAPABA’s Best Lawyers Under 40 list recognizes young attorneys from across the country of the highest caliber,” proclaims Joseph J. Centeno, a partner with Obermayer Rebmann Maxwell & Hippel and president of NAPABA. Jim Goh, a partner at Holland and Hart LLP and chair of NAPABA’s selection committee, agrees. “These individuals are prominent in their chosen field of legal endeavor. They have tried and won major cases; they have handled complex deals; they have received coveted judicial appointments; and they have also shown a clear commitment to community and public service, particularly for the APA community—and they have done all of this at a relatively early stage in their careers.”
Accomplished Attorneys
Each of this year’s honorees can point to significant cases and transactions that have shaped their careers. Charlotte Kim, partner at Choate, Hall & Stewart LLP, recalls that “one of my most exciting transactions was the first ever default by a sovereign government (Ecuador) of Brady Bonds, and the first ever acceleration of the Brady Bonds by the bondholders. As if the situation were not tense enough, in the middle of the transaction we had an attempted government takeover, the finance minister changed, there were constant rumors of huge public protests in Quito, and to top it all off , a volcanic eruption near Quito. ‘Political risk’ and ‘force majeure’ took on whole different meanings.”
Daniel Lew, managing attorney for the Sixth District Public Defender’s Office in Duluth, Minnesota, recalls a murder case “where my client was charged with causing the death of his estranged wife by infl icting more than fifty stab wounds. This was a challenging case that involved a young Hmong couple. A young husband with undiagnosed mental illness and the frustration of a strong-willed traditional Asian male seeing his wife become more independent. To add to the difficulty of the three-week trial, the jurors’ personal property was stolen from the jury room.”
Sean Reyes, a partner at Parsons Behle & Latimer, said that his most interesting case actually arises from events that occurred in 1916. “In 2005, I was president of the Utah Minority Bar Association, and we spearheaded a celebration of the first fifty minority lawyers admitted to practice in Utah. It was a chance to honor them for their courage and persistence in overcoming barriers, and to bring attention to the importance of diversity in the practice. In our research, we came upon the name of Samuel Lawrence Marsh, an African American lawyer admitted to practice in 1909, who was the very first minority lawyer in Utah. Mr. Marsh was disbarred in 1916, based on allegations that he fraternized with white people and ran a house of ill repute. All we had to inform us about his situation was the opinion of the Utah Supreme Court from that time. We researched archived transcripts of the initial hearing prior to his trial. Much of the evidence against him seemed insuffi cient to even go to trial, and we felt he was unjustly disbarred. We continue to review the evidence and prepare to request that the Utah State Bar and Utah Supreme Court reinstate him posthumously.”
Vince Chhabria, a former law clerk to Justice Stephen G. Breyer of the United States Supreme Court, is currently a member of the government litigation team of the San Francisco City Attorney’s Office. Among his major cases are the defense of San Francisco’s universal healthcare program and the city’s challenge to California’s ban on same-sex marriage, as well as the defense of two separate constitutional challenges to the city’s ban on tobacco sales in drug stores.
Gilbert Liu, a partner at Baker & McKenzie in New York, worked on a series of transactions for the Motown songwriting team of Holland-Dozier-Holland. “We securitized their songwriter royalties,” notes Liu. “It was fascinating to work with such creative individuals on such a unique set of transactions. Brian Holland even wrote a song for my wedding.”
Toni D. Nguyen, assistant general counsel of Belo Corp., recalls acting as one of the lead attorneys negotiating the largest online partnership between Yahoo!, Inc. and the Newspaper Consortium. Nguyen stated that “it was a deal for the serving and selling of online targeted advertisements over a network of 800 Web sites. This exclusive deal marks only the second partnership of this kind and magnitude for both Yahoo! and the Newspaper Consortium, and has proven its ability to quickly drive incremental revenue and earnings during a period when structural and cyclical changes are impacting newspapers’ traditional sources of revenue and forcing newspapers to dramatically restructure their traditional businesses.”
For John Truong, an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the District of Columbia, his proudest moment came in 2006, when the Daughters of the American Revolution recognized him with the “Americanism Medal.” “I delivered my acceptance speech in Constitution Hall before about 3,000 people, and retraced my family’s escape from Vietnam as boat people to a refugee camp in Hong Kong, to our arrival in this country and to where we are today,” Truong recalled.
Karen Nakasone, a public defender in Honolulu, Hawai`i, recollects a case where “the Hawai`i Supreme Court struck down the public-notifi cation provisions of the state’s sex-off ender registration law as unconstitutional. The court found that my client, convicted of groping a female while intoxicated, had a due-process right to a hearing to show that he did not pose the kind of community threat warranting lifetime public notification of his sex-off ender status.”
Trung Tu, partner at McEwen Gisvold LLP, in Portland, Oregon, recounts his decision to run for County Circuit Judge in Multnomah County in May of 2006 as one of his most difficult, yet rewarding, career decisions. “Although I missed making the runoff by 1.31% of the vote, the campaign taught me a great deal about myself, the community, politics, my fellow candidates and how to do things better the next time.”
Facing Stereotypes and the “Model Minority” Myth
When asked about perceptions of APAs that they have faced over the course of their careers, this year’s awardees offered plenty of examples. May Mon Post, a solo practitioner who owns The Post Law Firm in Philadelphia, offers a definition of the “model minority” myth as applied to APAs: “Certainly, there’s a myth about APAs generally. While there are a lot of APAs who are doing well and who have successfully assimilated into mainstream American society, there are just as many, especially from more recent Asian immigrant communities—Cambodian, Hmong, Burmese, and Laotian, among them—struggling at the bottom. And for them, the American dream is still out of reach.”
Post continues, “When it comes to the model minority myth and APA lawyers, it gets more complicated. As Dean Frank H. Wu [of Wayne State Law School] has suggested, APAs have been readily accepted in some circles where smart, focused, scientific, and math-minded workers are needed, yet may not always be fully accepted in other places–for example, as partners of law firms or leaders of corporations. Because of the perception that APAs are passive and docile–and therefore lack leadership qualities–they may lose out on being assigned more diffi cult or key assignments and may be passed over for partnership positions, especially in big law firms.”
Charlotte Kim concurred. “There is defi nitely a model minority myth which often leads people to perceive APA lawyers as hard workers but not ‘leadership material’ or innovators. As a female APA, you’re frequently ‘darned if you do and darned if you don’t’– if you’re not loud and aggressive, you risk being perceived as a submissive ‘worker bee’ and a follower; if you are aggressive and forthcoming, you risk being labeled with the equally negative ‘dragon lady’ stereotype. Th ese implicit biases often contribute to APAs not being promoted to leadership positions.”
Lee Cheng, general counsel of Newegg Inc., notes that, while these perceptions may seem benign, and perhaps even a “favorable” stereotype, it ultimately can have a pernicious effect on the APA community. “I don’t think that it is a myth that APAs are, as a group, successful in many respects,” shares Cheng. “However, I can see how the myth could be problematical when all APAs are assumed to be successful or advantaged, allowing certain individuals to fall through all safety nets and depriving others of equal opportunity.”
Other awardees noted preconceptions about APA women, as well as the “perpetual foreigner syndrome” that they have encountered in the course of their careers. Toni Nguyen reflects that she is surprised that “One of the comments that I still get today after folks learn that I was not born in this country is, ‘My, your English is so good.’ I usually smile.” Anne Shaw, a solo practitioner from Chicago, has had similar experiences: “I’ve received comments from clients, although rarely, expressing surprise at my language skills, but I don’t get mad, because I think it’s just ignorance. I can’t say how verdicts or judgments are skewed because of my sex and ethnicity.”
May Mon Post echoes similar concerns about female APA attorneys in particular: “I have faced perceptions or assumptions about [it] – that while we work hard, we are passive or non-aggressive. Because I am a litigator, I feel pressured to constantly prove – to both opposing counsel and my clients – that I can be just as aggressive as my white male counterparts. And then, of course, there are others who just assume that Asian women can’t be attorneys. I once went to immigration court, and the guard asked me if I was a translator. I have been in a few depositions where the court reporters assumed that I was a witness, or where the defendant’s witness assumed that I was a court reporter.”
Toni Nguyen recounts experiences similar to Post’s, but also acknowledges how her cultural upbringing infl uenced her behavior. “There is a perception that as an Asian woman, I’m meek, quiet, reserved, and passive. In some respects, I am – and was raised to be – very subordinate. For example, when I first started practicing law, I had a hard time calling my lawyer colleagues by their first name if they were older than I was. It took many years of experience, confidence and self-esteem building, and just self-contentment for me to overcome this stereotype. Once I was able to both sincerely believe I was a good lawyer capable of giving solid advice and displaying good judgment and saw that belief reflected by my clients’ confidence in me, I no longer allowed any particular perceptions, assumptions, or stereotypes to weigh me down or become hurdles for me.”
Nguyen believes that gender played a greater role in her challenges than ethnicity: “Early in my career, the stereotype challenges I faced were less about being an APA lawyer than about being a woman. For example, as a female litigator in the early years of my career, I was at times mistaken for an administrative assistant or paralegal. At one deposition, I was asked to get coffee for the deponent by my male counterparts. In addition, I frequently felt bullied by my male, often older, opposing counsel, particularly when I was handling, say, a call or deposition without a supervising partner. It may have been more about my junior status than being a woman, but I often wonder if I endured the same extent of bullying or ridicule just because I am a woman.”
Sean Reyes observes that perceptions affect APA males as well, and admits that some of the roots of his earlier behavioral patterns also lie in the way he was raised. “Another APA who made partner around the same time had similar experiences in that we both had to learn to stand up for ourselves more when it came to opportunities or office politics. We commiserated that when we were younger attorneys, we both had perhaps too much respect for the community over individual, for elders or those senior to us, and a desire to not want to appear to be ‘causing trouble.’ As a result, we failed to advocate for ourselves or address perceived injustices. We have outgrown that and become more balanced in that regard.”
Michael Yap, vice president and corporate counsel at Prudential, expressed the concern that some APAs may not even be conscious of the perceptions that may be applied to them, and how their careers can suffer. “One of the biggest challenges an APA lawyer faces with regard to race-based perceptions and assumptions is not knowing when they are being applied. These perceptions and assumptions often do the most damage to an APA lawyer’s career without his or her knowledge, particularly as many decisions regarding staffing, promotion, or opportunity can occur behind closed doors and without explicit articulation.”
The Importance of Mentoring
Many of this year’s awardees credit mentoring relationships as serving a critical role in their development as attorneys. Steven K. Yoda, of the law firm Bird Marella in Los Angeles, relates how he entered mentoring relationships. “Over the years, I have found mentors through a variety of avenues. Some have come through formal mentorship programs; others have come through work relationships; still others have come through friendships formed through bar activities. Through these relationships, I have learned that mentors who are genuinely interested in fostering my success are absolutely invaluable. I have been a beneficiary of mentorship, and I adopt the same approach to those I mentor.”
Daniel Lew found mentoring from other APA attorneys even more important given his location in Minnesota. “I cherish APA mentorships,” said Lew. “I know well the feeling of being one of the few APA attorneys in the upper midwestern states. We live in a state that has very few Asian lawyers, and every opportunity to share and learn from each other is critical to professional and personal growth.”
Celia Lee, of the San Francisco City Attorney’s Office, emphasizes that if you seek mentorship, you need to take responsibility for the relationship. “When I’ve come across someone whom I thought could mentor me, I’ve tried to pursue the relationship,” said Lee. “It’s important to be proactive as a protégé.”
Wendy Wen Yun Chang, partner at Hinshaw & Culbertson, LLP in Los Angeles, takes the advice a step further: “I think the most important thing I’ve learned as both a mentor and a mentee is a willingness to be open and honest, sometimes brutally so, about the feedback that is sought, and the feedback that is given. It is through that type of communication that I have found true positive growth.” DB
Ben Lumicao is counsel in the securities and corporate governance division of Allstate Insurance Company’s law department. He was recognized as one of NAPABA’s Best Lawyers Under 40 honorees in 2006.
From the January/February 2010 issue of Diversity & The Bar®