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NCVAA Becomes a Permanent National Bar Association

The National Conference of Vietnamese American Attorneys (NCVAA) held its inaugural installation ceremony on Friday, November 19, 2010 in Los Angeles, California. NCVAA is the first ever national Vietnamese American bar association.

Judge Jacqueline My Le Duong, Superior Court of Santa Clara County, California, administered the oath of office to the organization’s first set of officers and directors. Judge Nho Trong Nguyen, Superior Court of Orange County, California, delivered a keynote address. About seventy attorneys and law students from around the United States attended the event .

Though newly formed, NCVAA arises out of five years of network-building efforts by Vietnamese American attorneys nationwide, including ad hoc conferences that also went by the NCVAA name. The Vietnamese American Bar Association of Northern California hosted the first conference in San Jose, California in 2006. The second NCVAA conference was hosted by the Vietnamese American Bar Association of Southern California in 2007, in Orange County, California. Later conferences rotated among various locations.

“Given the enthusiasm of the conference attendees and the recognized need for a permanent national organization, we decided to turn NCVAA from an annual one-time thing to an incorporated bar association,” said Mai D. Phan, the organization’s first president.

Phan has personally experienced the need for a national infrastructure. Now living in California but raised in Mississippi and Louisiana, she helped mobilize Vietnamese American attorneys nationwide to respond to crises in the Gulf states caused by Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and the BP oil spill in 2010.

“We are especially pleased that Judge Jacqueline Duong will be administering our oath of office,” said Caroline Nguyen, an attorney in Washington, D.C. and NCVAA’s vice president. “She was the driving force in organizing the first annual conference before she was appointed to the bench and has been a great supporter all along.”

For more information, please contact Mai D. Phan, President of NCVAA at (408) 975-9321 or mai@pnallp.com.