Debra Wong Yang

Now the co-chair of the crisis management group at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP, Debra Wong Yang is a former Los Angeles County Superior Court judge, a former Los Angeles police commissioner and the first Asian American woman to serve as a U.S. Attorney. She led the Los Angeles office, the largest federal prosecutor's shop outside of Washington, D.C., for four years before joining Gibson Dunn in 2006.

In mid-April she was in New York for meetings with clients and with the East Coast branch of her Alliance for Asian American Justice initiative, a pro bono effort at combatting anti-Asian hate. She helped launch the initiative a year ago and serves as its co-chair.

"I'm busy with very varied matters," she said. "This initiative is personal for me. I grew up in Chinatown, my grandfather helped found the place, and I have an identity close to these recent immigrants." Yang added her firm backed her with time and resources. "I went to our new managing partner, Barbara Becker, and told her about it and she said 1,000 percent they'd be behind us. I probably spent 400 to 500 hours on it last year."

She keeps many clients under the radar. Among those known publicly are the Regents of the University of California, the administrations of both UCLA and USC, the Los Angeles Opera, the Johnson & Johnson board of directors, MGM Resorts International, Archer Aviation and Auspex Pharmaceuticals Inc.'s ex-CEO, Sepehr Sarshar.

Federal prosecutors announced insider trading charges against Sarshar in 2020, accusing him of telling family members and friends about a 2015 takeover offer from Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. U.S. v. Sarshar, 1:21-cr-00202 (S.D. N.Y., filed Aug. 21, 2020).

Yang said she'd attained a favorable outcome for her client. "We had fantastic interface with the government and they have walked away from the charges. We're in discussions with the SEC now." She credited the motions she'd filed over problems with the FBI's affidavit concerning Sarshar. "Late last year, the government decided to dismiss," she said. "This was a huge, huge win, phenomenal. I haven't seen anything like this in my years of practice."

She described one new client in general terms. "We have an electric car company--I can't say which one--that is dealing with legal fallout from potential inter-board fights, post-SPAC issues and regulatory investigations. This one takes up a lot of my time, with phone calls twice a day, including 11:30 p.m. on weekends.

"There's a full-on onslaught as they sort themselves out. Everything is immediate and important and relevant. It's important to them to have someone who's seen a lot and been through a lot."

- John Roemer