by Richard W. Millar, Jr.
On January 21st, Lei Lei Wang Ekvall will be installed as the President of the Orange County Bar Association. She will be our first female, Asian American President. She wasn’t always from Orange County and she wasn’t always Lei Lei. Of course, she wasn’t always Ekvall either, but I will get to that part shortly.
She was born in Taiwan and moved with her family to Southern California when she was in the second grade. At that time, she was named Lei and her younger sister was named Pei. When the family moved to California, they asked her American uncle’s advice on how their daughters’ names should be Americanized. (Pei by itself has no English translation; Lei by itself means thunder.) The advice, which with the wisdom of retrospection was questionable, was that it would be cute to double or mirror their first names. Thus, Lei became Lei Lei and Pei became Pei Pei, monikers which became increasingly problematic when the girls went through high school. If nothing else, as Lei Lei says, it built character. She also allowed as how she has heard every joke that those combinations of names could engender.
In this country, both her parents worked. Her father, Hans, who had been a jet pilot for the Taiwanese Air Force, went into the seafood importation business and her mother Laura worked as a secretary at Northrop among other places. Lei Lei credits her college educated mother with inspiring her and her sister to become educated and to seek their own careers.
Lei Lei graduated from Pacifica High School in Garden Grove, U.C. Irvine and USC Law School. Her first semester at Law School was the first time that she moved out of the house. Until that time she said she had led “a rather sheltered life.” After law school, she clerked for two years at the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Los Angeles. After that she looked for a job in Orange County and went to work for the Buchalter, Nemer firm. After a few months, she joined a breakaway group and has ever since been with the firm which is now known as Weiland, Golden, Smiley, Wang Ekvall & Strok, LLP in Costa Mesa. The firm has been very supportive of Lei Lei’s Bar activities, and she describes it as her “second family.”
Lei Lei is married to Johan Ekvall who is Swedish. Sensing a story, intrepid reporter that I am, I asked her how she ended up meeting and marrying a Swedish engineer. The answer simply was that he had finished up his studies in Sweden and came to U.C. Irvine for what we might call a year abroad, and studied at U.C. Irvine while renting an apartment with some buddies on the Peninsula. They have a 2 1/2 year old son named Ian. (When I asked if that was one Ian or two she saltily replied, “very funny Dick”).
As is the case with most, if not all, Bar Presidents, Lei Lei has been long active in Bar activities. She has served as Co-Chair of the Pro Bono Committee, Chair of the Resolutions Committee, Chair of the Commercial Law and Bankruptcy Section and numerous other committees. She was also President of OCAABA (Orange County Asian American Bar Association) and, fortunately, the fact that I was the emcee at her installation did not permanently derail her career.
Lei Lei’s sister Pei Pei is now a partner in an accounting firm and her father, at age 73, has been accepted as a part-time snow boarding instructor at Mammoth. As Lei Lei observed, her former pilot father is one who likes to live life to the fullest. To get the job, he had to shave his beard as Mammoth has a dress code.
While Lei Lei has no set theme or pet project for her presidency, she wants to create a climate for the open sharing of ideas so that members can learn, as she has, how very much the Bar has to offer.
Welcome to the year of double thunder. _____________________________ Mr. Millar is a member of the firm of Millar, Hodges & Bemis in Newport Beach. He can be reached at millar@mhblaw.net.