ASSOCIATION FOCUS
SINCE ITS 1981 INCEPTION, THE KOREAN AMERICAN BAR ASSOCIATION OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA (KABASoCal) has strived to assist the region’s Korean community. T is year has been no exception. As an example, KABASoCal members got involved
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with the once-a-decade process of establishing new voting district boundaries for 15 Los Angeles city council seats. T ey attended a series of public hearings in which hundreds of residents and business owners in the Koreatown neigh- borhood asked that the 3-square-mile area be placed in a single council district. T is move would improve urban development there, the residents contended, such as more street repairs, parks, and recreational centers. Because this neighborhood of 100,000-plus residents hadn’t been unifi ed under a sole city council member, the residents said, the council members who had each represented a portion of Koreatown didn’t consider its residents and business owners as politically and economically signifi cant enough to merit stepped-up municipal services. So when the city council and mayor approved new dis-
trict boundaries that divided Koreatown among two coun- cil districts, KABASoCal President Jane Oak and other sympathetic attorneys decided to fi ght back on behalf of disgruntled residents. KABASoCal members also discussed the redistricting matter within their law fi rms. T is past July, fi ve Koreatown residents sued the city of
Los Angeles, claiming the new voting district boundaries violated their civil rights under the equal protection clause of the U.S. Constitution’s 14th Amendment. T ey alleged that among other things, boundaries of one of the council districts had been illegally redrawn for racially motivated reasons that left Koreatown unfairly divided. T ey asked a judge to appoint a special master to redo the boundaries. T eir attorneys—some of them former KABASoCal presi- dents—from the Los Angeles offi ces of Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, LLP, and Bird, Marella, Boxer, Wolpert, Nessim, Drooks & Lincenberg, APC, are handling the case pro bono. And KABASoCal has established a Koreatown
DIVERSITY & THE BAR® NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2012
BY LYDIA LUM
KOREAN AMERICAN BAR ASSOCIATION OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
legal defense fund, for which they plan to col- lect donations, to defray costs of expert witness fees and related expenses. “T e redistricting
controversy has been a political awakening for lots of people in Koreatown,” says Oak, an immigration attorney and principal of T e Law Offi ces of Jane Oak and Associates, PC, in Los Angeles. “For many of us in KABASoCal, the redistricting fi ght has become very personal.” Court papers show that city of Los Angeles offi cials,
KABASoCal PRESIDENT JANE OAK
meanwhile, disagree with the plaintiff s’ allegations and deny any wrongdoing. T e case is pending in a federal court. While championing Koreatown in the redistricting con-
troversy, KABASoCal members have still carved out time to conduct pro bono, walk-in legal clinics for low-income, mono- lingual Korean Americans. Once a month, volunteers convene at the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles, a nonprofi t law fi rm providing assistance to the poor, where they answer ques- tions and explain the meaning of English-only documents. T e counseling is almost entirely in Korean, Oak says, and at times includes law students as volunteer translators. At these clinics, KABASoCal members advise individu-
als on matters involving practice areas as wide-ranging as family, criminal, and immigration law. Some clients are proprietors of small businesses who have received demand letters but don’t understand that they are precursors to lawsuits, Oak says, adding that volunteers explain the legal options and sometimes encourage clients to settle out- of-court. Other clients include renters in landlord-tenant disputes in which they have received eviction notices but
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