大卫·欧博伊尔著
2017年11月27日
With members in all 50 states and more than 80 countries, the D.C. 酒吧 is beginning a regular feature to profile the people who make up our community. Read about your peers, their lives, and their work around the world.
Jones Day associate 吉姆•王 has been a citizen of multiple countries—China, 加拿大, and the United States—but it is his American 公民身份 that he is most proud of. 王宣誓就任美国总统.S. 公民在2008年大选前一个月
“I wanted to be able to vote in what I believed was a historic election,王说。. “I felt that I had found a home in a country that values a belief I identify with—that a democratic system of government is the best way to run a country.” That admiration for the country’s political and legal systems led Wang to pursue his U.S. 公民身份.
Wang recalls how he felt casting his first presidential vote for 酒吧ack Obama in 2008: “I was excited to vote for a president who I felt broke down a lot of barriers, 尤其是像我这样的少数族裔.”
出生在上海, Wang moved to 加拿大 at six years old when his father pursued his medical degree just outside of Toronto. 几年后, 王的家人定居在匹兹堡, 宾西法尼亚, where his father worked through his residency program. 高中毕业后, Wang stayed in the city to attend Carnegie Mellon University for his undergraduate studies.
而他的父母希望他成为一名医生, Wang realized during his first year at Carnegie Mellon that a career in the hard sciences was not going to make him happy, 让他发现了对人文学科的热情. Wang went on to study psychology and decision sciences.
通常, 王说, a degree in these subject areas often leads to a career as a psychologist or consultant, 但他对这些职业道路并不感兴趣. “I wanted to keep doing what I had found I loved in my undergraduate studies, which is deep thought analysis of complex issues and persuasive writing,王说。. “And that’s what led one of my academic advisors to recommend I consider law.”
Wang took his advisor’s recommendation to heart and found that he loved learning about the U.S. legal and political systems, which are drastically different from those in his birth country.
从卡内基梅隆大学毕业后, 小王从匹兹堡交易到波士顿, 他就读于哈佛法学院吗. 王说 he chose Harvard because “the law is about being part of a community and being able to share ideas. Going to Harvard allowed me to meet a lot of future leaders in the field.”
Upon finishing law school, Wang accepted a position at Jones Day as an associate. The firm has a policy that allows first-year associates to sample different practice areas to help them discover what they were most interested in. Wang took on cases and projects in antitrust, patent litigation, trademark, and white collar defense. 但有一个领域对王来说很突出——税务.
“I wanted to find an area of the law where there were rules, 如果你理解并遵守规则, 你答对了,王说。.
和公司的税务团队一起工作, Wang found he enjoyed the collaborative nature of the practice area and that it was not fundamentally antagonistic.
“I like that my practice area generates ways to make clients more profitable—to optimize their taxes rather than preventing them from paying damages,王说。. “I like that clients are happy to talk to us because we can save them money.”
在他的税务业务之外, Wang is a regular volunteer and co-coordinator for Jones Day’s involvement with the D.C. 酒吧公益中心的房东租户资源中心, 协助客户解决房屋问题, 包括那些正在审理的案件. Wang also is involved with the 住房辩护权项目, which provides representation to individuals living in subsidized housing who are facing eviction.
“Losing a place to live is a drastic result that significantly impinges on your ability to enjoy your life,王说。.
One of the most rewarding pro bono cases Wang has worked on involved a client who was charged a variety of fees by her landlord that she was unable to pay. “We were able to show that a lot of the fees were charged by error or were illegal,王说。. “我们花了75美元解决了她的案子, when they had originally alleged the total was in the thousands of dollars, 这是她无法支付的. 这是一个很好的结果，非常值得.”
