Nicole Gon Ochi

Ochi is the rare attorney who will confess she isn’t entirely enchanted with the profession. Though she graduated summa cum laude from Loyola Law School, clerked for a judge on the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and is now supervising attorney for impact litigation at Asian Americans Advancing Justice – LA, she distinguishes her goals from the means she employs to get there.

“I don’t love being a lawyer,” she said. “I do love social justice work and using the law as a tool.”

Ochi is currently involved in a major affirmative action case at Harvard University, co-counseling with the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and Economic Justice in Boston and the group’s national office on behalf of a diverse group of prospective and current students who support Harvard’s race-conscious admissions policy. Though U.S. District Judge Denise J. Casper denied their motion to intervene, she granted them so-called amicus-plus status, allowing them to submit briefs, appear at oral argument sessions and submit witness testimony. Ochi is lead lawyer for the Asian-American student amici. Trial is set for October. Students for Fair Admissions Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College, 1:14-cv-14176 (D. Mass., filed Nov. 17, 2014).

The amici hope to build on their success in Texas, where Ochi was lead attorney on an amicus brief supporting the right of state universities to consider race as one factor in the overall assessment of admissions applications. In June 2016, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the University of Texas at Austin’s race-conscious admissions policy. Fisher v. University of Texas, 136 U.S. 2198 (2016).

Both cases are important — Harvard for private schools and Texas for public schools — in part because, Ochi said, Asian-Americans increasingly have been used as a “racial wedge” against blacks and Latinos by those trying to dismantle affirmative action policies.

“Even though [Harvard is] a limited case involving an elite school, the impact could be quite large,” Ochi said. “I’m confident that ultimately race-conscious administrative programs will withstand this legal challenge.”

In another matter, Ochi was lead class counsel representing more than 400 Korean and Latino port truck drivers in Los Angeles challenging their alleged misclassification as independent contractors victimized by wage theft. The case settled for $5 million. When the defendant port trucking company filed for bankruptcy, Ochi persuaded the court to combine the defendants’ assets with joint enterprise entities so the drivers could get paid. “They were playing shell games, but the court saw through it,” she said. Talavera v. QTS Inc., BC501571 (L.A. Super. Ct., filed Feb. 22, 2013).

— John Roemer