ASSOCIATION FOCUS
VIETNAMESE IMMIGRANTS BEGAN ARRIVING IN THE UNITED STATES IN LARGE NUMBERS NEARLY 40 YEARS AGO, RIGHT AFTER THE FALL OF SAIGON. MANY OF THEM SETTLED IN PLACES LIKE CALIFORNIA, LOUISIANA, TEXAS AND MICHIGAN, WORKING AS SHRIMPERS, FISHERMEN AND SMALL MERCHANTS. Now as the community comes of age, more young
Americans of Vietnamese descent are going to college and moving into professions, including law. Estimates of Vietnamese-Americans working in the
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legal fi eld range from 1,000 to 2,000, but anecdotal evidence suggests the numbers are rising. In the last decade or so, several Vietnamese-American lawyers groups have popped up around the country; among them, the Vietnamese-American Bar Associations of the Greater Washington D.C. area and of Northern California. About nine years ago, these groups came together to form an umbrella organization known as the National Conference of Vietnamese-American Attorneys (NCVAA). T e organization formally incorpo- rated as a bar in 2010. T ough there are several Asian-American legal groups,
BY LEKAN OGUNTOYINBO
NCVAA —CREATING A VOICE FOR VIETNAMESE-AMERICAN ATTORNEYS
Kim Nguyen, a senior associate at an Orlando, Fla.,
law fi rm who is also NCVAA vice president, says a large number of people in the community still don’t speak English, particularly those from her parents’ generation. Many of them are mystifi ed or intimidated by the work- ings of the law and some would prefer to deal only with an attorney who speaks their language. “It’s nice to build a network,” says Nguyen. “So if they
“A LOT OF THEM DON’T KNOW THEY
CAN STUDY LAW WITH AN ENGINEER- ING DEGREE AND BECOME PATENT ATTORNEYS.” —NGUYEN VU
have a need for an attorney, there’s someone they can reach out to. With my last name, I get a lot of calls from people looking for a Vietnamese attorney. T is morning I got a call from someone. I had to speak Vietnamese to her. She was looking for an attorney who speaks Vietnamese, so I referred her to someone in Ohio.” NCVAA often recruits Vietnamese-American under- graduates to help out at its signature event, its annual national conference, as part of an eff ort to expose them to attorneys and the legal profession. In addition to net- working opportuni- ties, the conference
NCVAA is America’s fi rst national Vietnamese-American bar association. NCVAA was formed when some young Vietnamese-American lawyers who belonged to other local and regional associations of Vietnamese-American lawyers and often ran into each other at various law conferences decided to form their own national group as a way to connect and perhaps even socialize but, most importantly, create a national voice like some of the other bar associa- tions formed along ethnic lines, says president Nguyen Vu, a Washington D.C.-based corporate attorney.
DIVERSITY & THE BAR® MAY/JUNE 2014
features professional development workshops. Sometimes the organization honors high-profi le jurist at the confer- ence. Past honorees include Jacqueline Nguyen, a judge on the ninth circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals. Nguyen, who immigrated to the States as a 10-year-old, is said to be the fi rst Vietnamese-American woman to serve as a judge. Many Vietnamese immigrant parents know little about
the legal profession and are likely to steer their children toward engineering, medicine and pharmacy—traditional middle-class occupations in the old country, Vu says. “A lot of them don’t know they can study law with an
engineering degree and become patent attorneys,” he adds. “We let them know there are other avenues out there.”
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