My background is varied. I come from a civil litigation background, I practiced primarily initially insurance coverage and bad faith but we did a little bit of everything at my earlier firms in my earlier locations and so, I have a broad base. I do a lot of appellate work and I’ve done that over the course of my career, which helps me. Law in motion is one of my strong points and so, when we’re drafting motions and fighting on paper certainly that’s an area that I feel that I have excelled in and I’ve learned through a broad base of civil litigation experience having dealt with class actions and protracted discovery. You know, heavy law in motion practice appellate all the way through trial I’ve really got a varied background that helps me to excel, I think, in all phases of litigation.

My background is pretty interesting in terms of my family history. My family was involved in the thoroughbred horse racing industry. And so, the way that I draw a parallel what I learned from my family and what I do as a lawyer is that in horse racing as in all competitive sports the goal is to win. What I learned from my father that you have to be number one, honest with your clients, you have to be ethical, and you have to do what you can to win but within the bounds and the rules that are set up. And that you have to be able to deal with defeat even though in my practice, fortunately, it doesn’t happen very often. I’ve been lucky and successful in that regard that you can’t always win every horse race and you can’t always win every case.

And so, to know that you’ve achieved the best result of the circumstances and to be able to move on from those bumps in the roads and those defeats is something that my background, I think, has taught me.

So currently, I’m serving on the board of trustees for the San Fernando Valley Bar Association, which is our local valley bar association. I’ve done that for a couple of years, I’m currently the secretary so as of next year, I will be the president elect or the vice president of that organization. I’ve also been the chair of the Attorney Referral Service for the bar, which helps the community with people who can’t find legal services and are seeking those services.

We’ve been able to achieve great results for people in the community that cannot afford or find lawyers. And we’ve also been able to help the community through scholarships, disaster relief with the fires more recently. Our bar association has been instrumental in helping the community with legal assistance for all those people that were affected by the fires. And so, my community service is something that’s very important to myself and my firm and that I pride myself in.