About Joe Mullich
Joe Mullich’s writing has appeared in more than 500 publications, ranging from the Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review, and Wired Magazine to Consumer Reports, Cosmopolitan, and The Onion. He has received more than four dozen writing awards from the National Society of Newspaper Columnists, National Headliners, International Society of Weekly Newspaper Editors, LA Press Club, and other press organizations. He has written more than 50 stories for Super Lawyers, including regular cover features in Southern California. The common thread in his work is story telling—relating even the most complex topics in terms of the effect on people.
Articles written by Joe Mullich
‘Now, Do You Want to Hear the Twist?’
Marc X. Carlos knows who to attack, when to attack, how to attackWhen Marc X. Carlos tells stories of the dramatic criminal defense cases he’s handled, he often pauses and smiles before adding, “Now, do you want to hear the twist?” This is partly a reflection of having a lot of stories to tell. He’s taken on more than 200 jury trials and been lead counsel in 32 homicide cases, many of which have made headlines and ended up being featured in books and true crime shows. It’s also a function of being a born storyteller with three mystery novels under …
The Fast and the Fervent
Nina Marino brings theater and a down-to-earth vibe into the courtroomIn 2013, Nina Marino, co-founder of the white-collar defense firm Kaplan Marino in Los Angeles, was representing a charter school operator charged with embezzlement and misuse of public funds. During her opening, she produced a large binder of minutes from the charter school’s meetings—an important detail to show that the school wasn’t, as she puts it, “some schlocky-run operation.” Then, as she spoke, she kept removing bundles of documents from the binder and slamming them on the …
Touchdown
Class action attorney Deborah Dixon is GC to the LA ChargersDeborah Dixon is the founding partner of The Dixon Firm, a class action law office. She is also general counsel of the Los Angeles Chargers. “I tell people that my full-time job is being a lawyer, and my hobby is being a lawyer,” she says. With such multitasking prowess—did we mention that Dixon is also the immediate past president of the San Diego County Bar Foundation?—you might expect a big ego. Think again. Dixon readily discusses her issues with imposter syndrome, which initially …
The Many Sides of Arash Homampour
The hugely successful personal injury attorney bares allOnce again, opposing counsel was deriding personal injury attorney Arash Homampour’s case. It was 2003. Homampour was representing the family of a 14-year-old Latina who was struck and killed by a car while walking along the street in Fontana. City officials felt the blame for the accident was clearly on the unlicensed minor driver, who was going 70 mph down the street, rather than the city itself, which provided no sidewalk to separate pedestrians from vehicles. “The city of Fontana hired …
Thicker Than Water
Stuart Somach is in water law for the long haulIn the late 1980s, National Marine Fisheries Service and the Department of Justice sued Glenn-Colusa Irrigation District for killing winter-run Chinook salmon due to a faulty fish screen. That’s when Sacramento rice farmer Donald Bransford became involved. A newcomer to the complex web of California’s water laws, Bransford attended a seminar on the topic, where he was surprised to hear the presenter not only mention Bransford’s situation—but that he would lose his upcoming litigation. …
Full-Contact Litigation
Robert Hamparyan takes personal injury personallyIt’s the kind of story Robert Hamparyan, a trial attorney who heads Hamparyan Injury Lawyers in San Diego, has heard countless times: A motorcyclist turns into an intersection, is hit by a truck, and lands unconscious on the street. It’s sheer luck other vehicles don’t run over them. But in this particular story, the motorcyclist is Hamparyan himself. It happened a few decades ago in Huntington Beach. He wound up with a severe concussion and no memory of the accident, but it …
McNicholas & McNicholas & McNicholas
A father, two sons, and letting Rodman be RodmanAt family dinners with John, Patrick and Matthew McNicholas, the conversation is less likely to be about the latest bingeworthy show than, say, the assumed risk someone takes when water skiing.This is a family that lives and breathes law. “Fun fact: We are the only family that has members in the American Board of Trial Lawyers, the American College of Trial Lawyers and the International Academy of Trial Lawyers,” says Matthew. “The International Academy only has 500 members and is by …
Breaking the Algorithm
Neel Chatterjee’s offbeat recipe for Silicon Valley successOfficially, Neel Chatterjee is a partner in Goodwin Procter’s intellectual property litigation practice. But that title is almost an afterthought on his business cards, where, in bold type, he describes himself as “Partner and Very Handsome Man.” Chatterjee smiles mischievously when asked about the card. “It adds a layer of humanity to the legal services,” he says. “And it’s one of the most useful recruiting and business development tools I’ve ever had. But that’s not the …
Serving the Underserved
Julia Yoo represents the female prisoners and others society has written offIn 1998, a half century after the U.N. General Assembly proclaimed the milestone Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the international organization Human Rights Watch wrote that basic rights for women were “still being challenged at every turn.” That was also the year a recent law school grad named Julia Yoo began helping women whose rights few cared about: prisoners at the Denver Women’s Correctional Facility. On Yoo’s first day at the prison, a large group of inmates sat all day in …
The Difference Maker
The passion and decorum of J. Bernard Alexander IIIHarold Carter Jr. had waited five long years for his day in court. In 2016, he’d been fired from FedEx, where he was employed for a quarter century, working his way up from cargo handler to manager. But when he suffered a spinal cord injury in 2014, FedEx would not accommodate his doctor’s work restrictions. Instead, his workload increased. Eight months after he filed an internal complaint alleging discrimination, harassment and retaliation, he was fired. Even today, 18 months since the …
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