The Importance of Grit

Gene Kang on caring for community and remembering others’ sacrifices

Published in 2024 New Jersey Super Lawyers magazine

By Natalie Pompilio on March 20, 2024

Share:

When Gene Kang was growing up in East Hanover, the town didn’t have many residents of Asian descent—even today, more than 80% describe themselves as white—and he didn’t fully embrace his Korean heritage. He rarely felt discriminated against, he says, but he
did have a sense of otherness.

“I really spent most of my life trying to assimilate, to be like everyone else,” says Kang, 40, a partner at civil litigation firm Rivkin Radler. “It was only later on, in college and in law school, that I started to embrace my background and to see it more as an advantage than a weakness.”

Today, Kang is a leader in the local Korean-American community, including assisting in voter registration drives and encouraging Asian Americans to run for office. He’s worked with prosecutors and law enforcement to determine the best ways to help Asian-American victims of hate crimes. He has helped organize pro bono clinics and 24-hour legal advice phone lines, taking language barriers into consideration. And he mentors younger lawyers at his firm and in the larger legal community, encouraging them to look ahead but also to think of those who will follow in their footsteps.

“What’s the point of doing all this and working so hard if you’re not making a path for the people that come after you?” he asks. “I’m trying to find these pockets and areas where, with my experience and my network, I can make a difference and have a value add.”

Kang is the immediate past president of the Korean American Lawyers Association of Greater New York, and a former board member of the Korean American Association of Greater New York. In December 2021, the consulate general for the Republic of Korea honored him for his outstanding service to the community.

Kang (front left) and his brother Edward with dad Yun Jong Kang and mom Yun Ye Kang, late ’80s.

He says he had the “typical first-generation, son-of-immigrants upbringing.” When he was very young, his parents opened a dry cleaning shop. He remembers them working long hours to make the business succeed, leaving him to care for his younger brother on weekdays. On weekends, Kang could be found at the shop, assembling wire hangers and organizing clothing orders.

“Seeing how hard they worked taught me a lot about what it takes to survive and the importance of grit,” he says. “That’s where my inner drive comes from.”

The family was comfortable, but he could see the difference in his friends’ lifestyles: “Everyone gets new sneakers every year? I’d get mine every few years. They’d go on trips or vacations to Aruba? I have literally never gone on that type of vacation with my parents.”

In high school, Kang excelled at debate and in mock trial competitions. He enjoyed trying to persuade others to see an issue his way.

“To be honest, I think I got that from always trying to get my parents to let me do things,” he says. “If I wanted a new pair of rollerblades, I had to prepare an outline in my head, and then maybe I’d have a 5% chance of getting it.”

His parents had high expectations, and encouraged him to find a career he was passionate about and to work hard to both succeed and contribute.

“They always tried to instill a sense of responsibility; not just doing something for yourself and your family, but for the larger community,” Kang says. “It’s doing something to make a difference.”

The law, he felt, would allow him to combine his love of verbal sparring with the potential to help people improve their lives. At Fordham University School of Law, he enjoyed the intellectual challenges and “the way it trains you to think. I tell young lawyers that’s one of the most important things about law school.”
Post-J.D., Kang worked for the Nassau County District Attorney’s Office, where he took on his first jury trial about two months into the job. And after about two years as an assistant district attorney, he was handling homicide cases. His supervisors, who were also mentors, noticed.

“Being an Asian person, one of the only two … I had to shine above and beyond,” he says. “I had to put in 200% more than anyone else to get on the radar.”

He noticed young attorneys often relied on written scripts for the opening and closing arguments. Some even read their questions to witnesses. Not Kang.

“When you memorize stuff, it creates knowledge banks for later,” he says. “I believe I spent more time preparing, and I think it paid off. Every time I had an opening or closing, many of my classmates and supervisors would fill up the pews and watch. I started to embrace that.”

After 4½ years with the Nassau DA, Kang began looking for a new challenge. He’d just gotten married and, he says, “a government salary is not the best for starting a family.” He hit the ground running at Rivkin Radler, which was involved in a large pharmaceutical case. Kang immediately offered his take on the jury selection process, then pitched in on other parts of the case.

“That’s how I started here—helping them script out different direct examinations, cross-examinations, objection responses,” says Kang, who still works with the same group of lawyers. “It doesn’t feel like it’s been eight years.”

Management at Rivkin Radler has also encouraged Kang to become a leader in the legal community. As a senior attorney, he urges younger colleagues to consider the values that he and his wife, Cathy, are passing along to their own next generation, 7-year-old Aaron and 5-year-old Emily.

“I constantly teach them that, to know where you’re going, you have to know where you’re from,” Kang says. “It’s not just the thousands of years of history back in Asia. It’s the history of Korean Americans and Asian Americans in this country. It’s understanding the people who came before them, including their grandparents, made sacrifices and overcame obstacles to survive. They need to understand what people went through to get them where they are.

Search attorney feature articles

Featured lawyers

Gene Y. Kang

Gene Y. Kang

Top rated Business Litigation lawyer Rivkin Radler LLP Hackensack, NJ

Other featured articles

Chris Fitzgerald’s year as a pro poker player

Julie Braman Kane co-founded an organization that sends out legal professionals to keep an eye on elections

View more articles featuring lawyers

Find top lawyers with confidence

The Super Lawyers patented selection process is peer influenced and research driven, selecting the top 5% of attorneys to the Super Lawyers lists each year. We know lawyers and make it easy to connect with them.

Find a lawyer near you