Emery Wang

Emery Wang did not build this firm the conventional way. Before law, he ran a graphic art company for 15 years. He served in the Army National Guard across South Dakota, Minnesota, and Texas. In law school he clerked in the DA’s office and tried two jury trials before graduating. He brought that same instinct for unconventional assembly to the firm he started in 2013.

His first employee was not a paralegal. It was Pete, a 30-year insurance adjuster who had spent three decades learning how insurance companies think, what they protect, and where they are vulnerable. Pete is still with the firm today as a consultant. 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.

Emery is one of the few Mandarin-speaking personal injury attorneys advertising in Oregon. He founded the Oregon Chinese Lawyers Association, building the kind of institutional presence that earns trust in communities over years, not through advertising. Two staff members speak Cantonese and Taishanese. The firm he built is reachable at the exact moment someone in those communities needs help.

What he wants for every client is simple: that they feel confident the firm will handle everything, and that they can concentrate on putting their lives back together.

“I know that’s who we’re fighting against. So those were the people I wanted on our side.”