AALJ Alums Reflect on a Year Deferred

When former AALJ Senior Articles Editors, Christina Yang '09 and Alvina Wong '09, were given the option to defer a year by their respective law firms, they both decided to work for organizations that serve the Asian American communities in California. As they prepare to start as first-year associates, they reflect on their experiences.


Alvina Wong

Alvina Wong The decision to join the Asian Law Caucus (ALC), a member of Asian American Center for Advancing Justice, during my time as a deferred associate was not difficult to make. ALC is the nation's first legal and civil rights organization serving the low-income Asian Pacific American communities. Its incredibly rich history of providing legal assistance to some of the most vulnerable in our community ensured that I would have a meaningful experience.

Since January, I have primarily been working with the housing and elder law program at ALC. Though the economic downturn has affected people across the board, our clients, mostly monolingual Chinese, low-income, and facing eviction, are particularly hard hit. One of the most memorable cases I have had also happens to be my first client. A family of four, who had recently emigrated from China, had signed a lease for a basement unit in Chinatown. This unit was windowless and suffered from habitability issues, including mold on the walls. Although the parents did not know one word of English, they signed the lease believing that the landlord, who was also ethnically Chinese, had informed them of the crucial terms. Unbeknownst to them, the document they signed was a commercial lease. When the relationship between the landlord and the tenants grew increasingly tense, the landlord filed an eviction case alleging that the family had used the unit illegally by converting a commercial unit for residential purposes. In the end, the clients were able to reach a settlement agreement with move-out terms that were favorable to them and only had to pay a fraction of the amount the landlord wanted from them.

During the three years that I was a part of the Asian American Law Journal, I was able to work on publishing scholarship that reflect the unique legal concerns of Asian Pacific Americans. To come to ALC from that perspective and be able to serve our community in direct services has been extremely rewarding. I am so grateful to Winston & Strawn, LLP and ALC for this opportunity.

** For more information about ALC, visit: http://www.asianlawcaucus.org/.

Christina Yang

Christina Yang When my firm, Mayer Brown, offered incoming associates the option of a one-year deferral fellowship at a legal nonprofit, I decided to apply for a position as Public Interest Fellow at the Asian Pacific American Legal Center (APALC), a member of the Asian American Center for Advancing Justice. APALC is dedicated to advocating for civil rights on behalf of the Asian American community, using direct services, impact litigation, policy analysis and advocacy, and leadership development.

I had interned at APALC my 1L summer, so it made perfect sense to take the opportunity to work with the wonderful impact litigation unit again. The team uses litigation to enforce and expand the rights of workers, consumers, and immigrants. Our current docket consists mostly of workers’ rights and consumer fraud cases, and we are also part of the civil rights coalition that recently brought suit against SB 1070, the immigration law passed in Arizona earlier this year.

I’ve spent a significant portion of my fellowship at APALC working on a consumer fraud case, Lin v. Kuckelkorn, in which APALC represents 77 mostly Chinese-speaking plaintiffs in a suit against the two former directors of a San Gabriel Valley art school that shut its doors very suddenly last summer and subsequently filed for bankruptcy. We just filed the complaint in June of this year. The two defendants used an aggressive Chinese-language advertising campaign to collect over $1.5 million in prepaid tuition from our clients.

Through my work on this case and others, I’ve been able to build invaluable litigation skills, including working with a large group of clients, doing in-depth legal research, developing motion practice skills, and determining case strategy. I’ve also had many opportunities to use Chinese in a professional setting, which I never had prior to this fellowship. Being an attorney on APALC’s litigation team has been very fulfilling. While serving the Asian American community and raising awareness of the various issues facing underserved and minority communities, I am also able to work closely with incredibly talented and dedicated colleagues. I am grateful to Mayer Brown for giving me this chance to spend my first year of practice with APALC.