Emery Wang

Emery founded his law firm in 2013, and his first hire wasn’t a paralegal. It was Pete, a 30-year insurance adjuster who’d spent three decades learning how insurance companies think, what they protect, and where they’re vulnerable. Pete is still with the firm today as a consultant. Among Emery’s next hires were defense attorneys. Then another. Then another. The firm he always imagined was one built from the inside out, staffed by people who knew the other side because they had been the other side. Always focused on representing the injured, the firm has grown to handle all types of injury matters, including those involving medical malpractice, product liability, catastrophic injuries, and wrongful death.

Before starting the firm, Emery co-founded Havana Street, a retro-themed graphic design studio in Austin, Texas, with fellow illustrator A.J. Garces. They were among the first custom clip art companies in the mid-1990s, closing out the partnership with an Aerosmith album cover in 2012.

A South Dakota native, Emery went to college in Minnesota and served in the Army National Guard in South Dakota, Minnesota, and Texas before moving to Portland to attend law school. There, as a certified law student, he clerked in the DA’s office and tried two jury trials before graduating. He has since served as traffic court prosecutor for the City of Fairview, Oregon, and volunteers as an attorney with the Domestic Violence Project at Legal Aid Services of Oregon. He has also served on the boards of the Oregon Trial Lawyers Association and the Multnomah Bar Association, and has practiced law in Oregon since 2009.

Emery is one of the few Mandarin-speaking personal injury attorneys in Oregon. He founded the Oregon Chinese Lawyers Association, building the kind of institutional presence that earns trust in communities over years. His paralegal speaks Mandarin, Cantonese, and Taishanese, and the firm he built is easily reachable when someone in those communities needs help.

Emery’s favorite pastimes are discussing things you’re not supposed to discuss in polite company, attempting woodworking projects from YouTube, and tinkering with and playing pianos.

At times, his wife and kids are mildly impressed.

“Know your enemy. Then hire them.”