Tsang’s Way

Sitting in her sun-filled Irvine office, Mei Tsang gestures to a colorful abstract painting leaning against the wall. A gift from the artist, Tsang’s late friend Virginia Phillips, the work is called On Our Back.

“It looks like hills, but it’s to celebrate a woman who does so much for society,” says Tsang. “I bought it from her when she was alive. … This was a piece that I really loved. It moved me—the colors and the meaning.”

Tsang, 50, is dressed in casual black pants, a white shirt, and a black sweater with a long, delicate gold necklace. Placed around her office are photos of her family—her husband and two sons—and fun trinkets such as a small stuffed owl perched on a shelf. Tsang seems focused first and foremost on everyone else’s well-being, offering water and coffee and a comfortable place to sit.

The immediate past president of the Orange County Bar Association, Tsang, who practices IP law at Umberg Zipser, has developed a reputation as mentor to younger attorneys and as someone intent on collaboration and bringing people together.

“Mei is very outgoing and inclusive,” says Dennis Slaughter, the CEO and executive director of the OCBA. “In everything that she does, she wants to make sure everybody feels welcome, everybody feels included.”

Tsang was born in Xi’an, a city of about 10 million people and the former capital of China. “I’m very proud to be born in Xi’an and of the spirit of my people, who are very down-to-earth, very straightforward people, very bold, very loving and caring,” she says. “They are salt-of-the-earth people who get things done.”

Tsang’s father was Indonesian Chinese, and when Tsang was 3 ½ he moved the family to Hong Kong for a better life. At that time, Tsang says, most areas of mainland China were poor, and residents didn’t move around much. As she got older, she learned that the divide between the mainland and the coastal city, which was still under British rule and spoke Cantonese rather than Mandarin, ran deep. Her father was a physics engineer—he worked for an oil refinery in mainland China—but the British didn’t recognize his degree and in Hong Kong he had to start from the bottom.

“We were really discriminated against because we were from mainland China,” she says. “We were told to get out of the store because we didn’t speak Cantonese. And in school, I was severely bullied.”

Things changed after her parents’ divorce. Tsang’s mother, an acupuncturist from a long line of Chinese traditional medicine practitioners, worked hard to support the family and soon met a Chinese-American man. When she moved to the U.S. to be with him, Tsang did not have the necessary paperwork to join her and lived with extended family in Xi’an. Those two years of waiting, when she was between the ages of 11 and 13, proved integral.

“The love of my family and friends during those two years gave me the foundation of who I am,” she says. “They accepted me no matter what.”

Tsang had learned a small amount of British English but was not fluent when she joined her mother and stepfather living in Chesterton, Indiana. She arrived in winter, and the 90-minute drive from O’Hare Airport left her mesmerized. 

“It looked like a fairy tale with these little houses with snow on top,” she says. “I was just amazed. But reality hit the next day when my stepfather handed me a shovel and said, ‘OK, you’ve got to shovel the driveway,’” she adds with a laugh. 

Another reality soon hit her. There were few other Asian families—and no Chinese ones—in Tsang’s town, and there was some culture shock. “In China, you wore one sweater during winter season,” she remembers. “There were not a lot of resources. And in America, you’re expected to change clothes every day. So imagine the horror that I wore the same sweater—and it was a bright green with geometric shapes, and was one of those sweaters that nobody forgets that you wore. So I know people were making fun of me.”

But by and large, she adds, the community was friendly and hospitable. At the local library, she met two older women, retired teachers who took her under their wing, imparting information about American food and culture, taking her on church outings and doing art projects with her. “Ms. Janet and Ms. Mary Beth were just lovely,” she says. “They volunteered their time to teach me. … I was hanging out with all the older ladies when I was 13 years old.”

As she acclimated to her new surroundings, Tsang began to realize that the foundation of love and self-acceptance she gained from her extended family in Xi’an gave her the confidence to try her best in her new environment, even if it meant being vulnerable. “Those few years in Xi’an really built up who I am as a person,” she says. “When I went to America, I had a good sense of self.”

Her mother proved a good role model as well. Attempting to set up an acupuncture business, she hit a snag: Indiana did not license acupuncturists. Wisconsin did, though, so she rented a clinic there, three hours from her home. Every week, she commuted there and back. In Wisconsin, she slept at the clinic.

“My mother is just fearless,” says Tsang. “She was so resilient. She’s my hero.”

Tsang entertained several career paths. At first, she wanted to be an architect, but discovered the necessary drawing and math didn’t come easy. Following in her mother’s footsteps, she considered medicine. At Purdue, she majored in biology and minored in English, but after taking an ambulance ride during an EMT course, she realized, “This is not my jam.”

After graduation, working as a sales rep, she did some soul-searching. Around that time, a friend was taking the LSATs. Tsang assumed that lawyers needed to have outstanding oratory skills in the country’s native language, which she felt she didn’t possess. But looking over the test, she found that she understood it easily, and it brought back a memory. While living in China, Tsang watched an early Andy Lau movie, The Unwritten Law, in which he plays a barrister who defends a prostitute on trial for murder who turns out to be his long-lost mother.

“It was very dramatic, and it made me think I wanted to be a barrister,” she says. The LSAT exam, she says, “resurrected that as a possibility.” 

At the University of Illinois College of Law at Urbana-Champaign, she was leaning toward criminal defense; but during an internship with Piper Marbury Rudnick & Wolfe (now DLA Piper), an Asian-American partner—“which were few and between back in those days,” she adds—told her, “‘Hey, you have this biology degree. You could do patent law.’ He got me thinking about a different career path that merged my undergrad with the law.” 

When she got an internship and then a permanent position at Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal (now Dentons), she was mentored by Dustin O’Regan and Harold Shapiro, who helped her understand how law firms function and what was expected of her. By then she was also doing intellectual property work. It was an immediate fit. “It’s the intersection of innovation and law, and I just fell in love with it,” she says.   

Tsang worked a variety of cases involving patents and trademarks before being exposed to the litigation side—a case involving the George Foreman grill, another about a one-cup coffee maker. It was when she worked a case involving a Chinese-manufactured product, a lava lamp, that she recognized the advantage her background gave her.

“There was hardly anybody on the case that spoke Chinese and English,” she says. “Turns out my bilingual skill was useful, even though I thought at times it was such an impediment.”

Now a partner at Umberg Zipser, Tsang feels she’s both attorney and business strategist for her clients. “I spend my time helping companies identify what’s protectable, procuring that protection in various jurisdictions all over the world, and helping them enforce the IP assets once they get those,” Tsang says. “That can include litigation, licensing, any type of negotiation. We break it down by identifying, procuring and then enforcing.

“If a company says they would love to be in Brazil or India, we always ask, ‘Why? What’s the business case there?’” she says. “It’s not a one-size-fits-all approach. … The same goes for enforcement efforts—whether we’re helping to defend someone who is accused of infringement, or helping a rights holder go after others who have infringed upon them.”

Business expansion into China, with its 1.4 billion potential consumers, has long been a dream of American companies, tempered by concerns about the inability to police knockoff products. Yet, according to Tsang, the country’s IP laws have improved significantly in the past two decades as the country has actively sought to attract foreign investment. “They really have caught up with their judiciary system in terms of enforcement,” Tsang says. “And they also have actively started filing for many of their own IPs all over the world. China is one of the highest IP filers globally.”

IP theft happens everywhere, of course. Recently, a client was seeing a sharp increase in knockoff products cutting into their bottom line, so Tsang gave a presentation to U.S. Customs and Border Protection at the Port of Long Beach—educating Border Patrol officers on how to spot the fakes. They saw instant results.

“That same day, Border Patrol started seizing products that were counterfeit,” Tsang says. “It’s really about getting results for the client.” 

As president of the Orange County Bar Association, Tsang focused her term on a platform of curiosity, connection and change. To that end, she brought back a task force focused on liaising with law schools; instituted an AI and technology committee; and resuscitated a fair to educate the community on the benefits of the legal community. “We had 23 local organizations display their booths,” she says. “We brought together law schools, the courts, the PDs, the DAs, and nonprofits and affiliate bars. I’m very, very proud of it. Everybody had a great time. People and their kids came, the dogs came out, it was just fantastic.”

Slaughter, the association’s CEO, says Tsang’s leadership style is to address challenges directly. “Each year has its unique challenges but Mei is somebody that doesn’t shy away from it,” he says. “If there’s an issue, if there’s a problem, she tackles it head-on to get things resolved and make the Bar better because of it.”

Tsang turned 50 last August and marked the occasion with a column titled “Fifty Ways to Leave Your Mark” for Orange County Lawyer. The list includes advice demonstrating the depth of Tsang’s lived experience and the grace and humor with which she carries it. Among the items: “If the grass looks greener, water your own first. Pull the weeds. Fertilize”; “You don’t need 100 friends, just a few who get your weird”; and “Integrity is more important than billable hours and money.”

Her free time is spent traveling and cooking—and better if she can combine them. “When I travel, I want to eat a local dish that I can also make at home,” she says. “That’s my souvenir.” 

Both activities are done with family. Her husband, Steve Brown, is a graphic designer. “He’s really the foundation for me and the rock of our family,” she says. “He can now cook Chinese food as good as anyone.” They have two children, Sam, 18, and James, 16. “We love to travel and help the community as much as we can,” she says. 

That’s a theme she likes to underline—the importance of giving back. “We don’t exist in a vacuum, especially in the field of law,” she says. “It’s really about … helping people. Not being afraid to be vulnerable to make those connections.”

After ticking off legal aid organizations to donate time to, including Public Law Center, Veterans Legal Institute, Asian Americans Advancing Justice, and Community Legal Aid SoCal, of which she is a past president, she says, “It is very important for people to know that, despite all the lawyer jokes, there are not enough lawyers. There’s a huge gap in access to justice. These legal aid [organizations] are sometimes the last legal hope for many. … Lawyers are needed more than ever.”

A Rose By Any Other

Tsang’s given name is pronounced differently depending on the region of China. In Xi’an, where she was born, Mandarin is spoken and her name is Wei. In Hong Kong, where she moved when she was young, they speak Cantonese, and, though it’s the same character (薇 or “Primrose”), her name became Mei. In Xi’an, she says, “people know me as Tsang Wei because they say the last name first.” Arriving in the U.S., that order was flipped and the Cantonese pronunciation chosen, which is how Tsang Wei became Mei Tsang.