Family Business

Ben Kwan’s origin story is one for the books. His father, Tat Kwan, fled Communist China in 1972 by swimming channels off Hong Kong, through the chain of islands to what was then Portuguese Macau. A fisherman on a boat saved him, and Tat wound up boarding in a bunkhouse in a multistory Chinese restaurant. In 1976, he immigrated to the United States, eventually landing a job as a cook at the legendary David Fong’s Chinese restaurant in Bloomington. There he met Jennifer, and they married and opened their own restaurant in south Minneapolis, Kwan’s Chinese Cuisine, in 1982. 

Within six months, Ben was born. “I grew up in a playpen in the dining room,” he says. 

He essentially went straight from that playpen to helping out at the restaurant, which by 1995 was Red Moon Chinese Café in Eden Prairie. While he didn’t always love it at the time, he now thinks of the experience as a gift.

“It was a master class in learning how to speak to absolutely anyone,” he says. “My dad’s customers were Minnesota Vikings, politicians, doctors, lawyers—and people who spoke no English and just moved to the U.S. and were working at the Wendy’s across the street [from Red Moon]. Being able to serve each of those people equally and learn about them as our customers, the people who were supporting us, was probably the best skill I’ve ever learned in my life. I’m so grateful for it, and it informs my law practice today—and probably the precise area of law I practice in.”

But before he made it to the law, he went to college at Northwestern University, where he majored in journalism and Asian studies. The bug for media work bit him early, through his involvement in theater, speech and writing, as well as a staff writing gig at the Star Tribune via the Minnesota Youth News, all of which propelled him into broadcast journalism.

Northwestern is also where he met his husband, Ted Haller, who was also studying journalism. Their senior year of undergrad, Kwan was the news director of the campus TV station; Haller the anchor. “He was my boss then, and he is kinda my boss now—nothing’s really changed,” Haller says with a laugh. At Haller Kwan, they both practice employment law for whistleblowers and the wrongfully terminated.

Perhaps their professional lives were fated to intertwine forever; upon graduation from college, they were both hired for the same CBS affiliate in the same city—a virtually unheard-of coincidence in the cutthroat hiring market for journalism grads in the early aughts. 

Kwan loved the work, but the increasingly unstable journalism job market made him reconsider his path. While he considered opening a restaurant with his father, he enrolled in law school at the University of St. Thomas.

“Serving people in a restaurant, charming the socks off people so they would leave an extra dollar on the table, communicating with them to get that extra dollar—that was a great skill to bring to journalism,” he says. It also comes in handy in law. “At the end of the day, it’s serving someone and telling their story. From those first days in the restaurant as a kindergartener—I think that’s when I first earned a tip—through journalism to today, it’s all sort of a natural arc.” 

That’s not to say it was easy to get his start. His first hand up came from—where else?—a connection from the restaurant. One of Red Moon’s regular customers was Bob Weinstine, one of the founders of Winthrop & Weinstine in Minneapolis. Weinstine was the first person to offer him a job as a summer associate. Kwan clerked for the firm for two summers while maintaining dean’s list status.

Winthrop & Weinstine is the kind of firm most students aim to join, Kwan says, a “gold standard of Big Law.” He accepted a job there after graduation. 

“He is one good lawyer, and I’m not just saying that,” Weinstine says. “I started that firm in 1979, and Ben is clearly one of the best young lawyers we ever attracted. He is incredibly well liked. If you can’t like Ben Kwan, it’s your problem.” 

Kwan worked on a number of corporate litigation matters at the firm. “He had just terrific results,” Weinstine adds. “Opposing lawyers loved him. He was able to develop a camaraderie with them. He was enormously well respected in the firm. I continue to adore him.”

So it’s no surprise that he supported Kwan when the young lawyer approached him a couple of years later to say that perhaps Big Law wasn’t where he wanted to be for the rest of his career. 

“I just didn’t feel connected enough to the people whose stories I wanted to tell,” Kwan says. “It was a really big motivator toward employment law on the plaintiff’s side. There is something about that Big Law journey that is so prized in the legal profession—and for good reason: There’s brilliant, high-caliber work that happens in that environment. But I do think that there is this myopic journey law students get going on that is sometimes highly preclusive of exploring other options that might be the difference between a healthy and enjoyable career versus one that might be less so.”

A friend who worked at a boutique employment law firm in Minneapolis clued Kwan in to the aspects that might appeal to him: being the principal attorney on a case, talking to multiple clients each day, seeing a case from open to close within a year. The salary was competitive, too. So he packed his banker’s boxes and joined Halunen Law in 2015 to cut his teeth on plaintiff-side employment law—with his former boss’s blessing. Weinstine notes the firm still sends Kwan referrals.

“By being open-minded, I was able to gain bountifully in many areas, including time,” Kwan says. “I discovered the art of the contingent-fee business model. If done correctly, it yields back a lot of time to you as a human being. That’s been a really big discovery for me and instrumental in my decision to remain a lawyer. Billing 2,000-plus hours a year doesn’t sound like living to me.

“There have been lots of little discoveries on the way. Building on them and being in a process of continual learning and humility has really helped me set up something that I would gladly shout from the mountaintops and call ideal.” 

It wasn’t long before Kwan was ready to make his next move. By then, Haller had graduated from law school after a stint as a reporter at FOX 9, and they hung a shingle in 2017. Kwan credits their early success to having a laser focus on whistleblowers and clients who’d been illegally fired. It was a good fit for their skillsets—Kwan’s expertise in customer service and their combined backgrounds in journalism: collecting facts, developing the narrative and holding people accountable, while protecting and representing clients to reach an outcome that minimizes the harm to their life.

“Ben cools as the temperature rises, which is a tremendous quality of self-restraint and really services the client,” Haller says. “When it comes to litigation, it’s a bit like surgery: It’s intended to fix a problem, but the process can be quite painful, and things can get worse before they get better. Ben is aware of that and does a really good job minimizing additional harm to the client, only adding new burdens when it’s absolutely necessary. There’s a lot of overlap with journalism. In journalism, you’re doing it for the service of the story or to effectuate change, and in law, it’s in the service of your client’s story and trying to effectuate change.” 

Kwan always tries to stay focused on the human element. “You have to give a damn about other people to do this kind of work,” he says. “With every new client I take on, the goal is similar to being a reporter: take these real experiences and move the needle somehow. I want to tell a story that helps the other side understand its risk in a way that is meaningful enough to come and solve the problem. That’s a hallmark of our practice.” 

He always looks forward to the moment, a couple of weeks into the representation of a client, when they get to read a draft of the demand letter to their former employer. “It’s so meaningful to get on the phone with our clients and hear them say something like, ‘I’ve never had someone listen to me and explain what I know in my heart or mind on paper like this,’” Kwan says. “That’s when we know we’ve done our job, because whatever moved them to feel so heard is 100 percent going to move the needle. … It means there’s a story that is compelling.” 

When Tonya M. Sconiers was fired from her job as principal of Denfeld High School in Duluth in 2019, she asked around and got Kwan’s name. After speaking with him, she felt a sense of empowerment she hadn’t felt in a long time.

“The reason I believe Ben is the best goes beyond the validating and goes to the true understanding of what someone is going through,” she says. “Facing it with courage: the good, the bad, the ugly. I knew I could trust him.”

They filed a federal lawsuit against the school district, alleging discrimination and retaliation. Sconiers says Kwan’s skills were on display in the filing, which she calls a “journalistic and legal manifesto that would make you weep.” He also meticulously laid out a course of action for her without sugarcoating the process. “He has a skillset that few people have in this world,” she says. “He is able to connect with people in the worst times of their lives.”

After battling the school district for two years, Sconiers settled for $329,000. “I felt like I was whole when it was done,” she says. “I strived and thrived and I didn’t just survive—I came out whole. And that is in huge part because of two things: my network and my excellent representation. … I would not be here, standing whole, happy, and healthy if it were not for Ben. I call him ‘My Ben.’”

Eight years into Haller Kwan, the mission has come further into focus. Their goal is to help people tell their stories, avoid re-traumatization and lengthy litigation, and get on with their lives.

“People often come to us so broken,” says Haller. “Maybe they’re in the process of healing or still a little raw.” 

The process can be unpleasant, and most clients prefer to put the experience in the rearview as quickly as possible. Yet they often remain in touch. “Ben’s magic is, he hears from these people and he serves two roles: getting some resolve, but also helping them heal,” Haller says. “It’s so fun to hear a few months or years down the road where people are, and his role in getting them there.” 

Through the work—and through serving on the board and as president of the Minnesota Asian Pacific American Bar Association, a year as vice president of the Minnesota chapter of the Federal Bar Association, and more—Kwan’s gotten somewhere, too. He’s connecting his past and present trades to build a successful, satisfying professional and personal future. 

“I did go from a family business to a family business, but my parents never got a vacation,” he says. “We’re finding a different kind of family business.”