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Meet Jimmy Cha

Today we’d like to introduce you to Jimmy Cha.

Jimmy, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
My parents migrated to California in the 70’s. I grew up really poor and didn’t have much growing up. My parents worked all the time and were hardly home. In 1992, my parents lost everything in the LA Riots.

As a result of my parents working all the time, I grew up getting into a lot of fights and trouble with the law. I barely graduated high school. The only reason I did was because of high school sports. After high school, I continued getting into trouble with the law.

By the age of 24, I had no job, no education. I had nothing. In short. My brother convinced me to go back to school. I went to community college and received a partial scholarship to UCLA and law school.

Since graduating law school, I opened up my own criminal defense practice. I also mentor paroles, guest speak all around California to inner-city youth, use to be an assistant high school wrestling coach, a Sunday school teacher for seven years at a local church, and coached the church’s basketball team.

Has it been a smooth road?
It was never a smooth road. I always use to wonder why my parents worked so hard, why people use to use racial slurs at us. Growing up, it wasn’t like today where there are a lot of minorities. Back then, I had to fight because of my ethnicity. I grew up gangs, committing crimes, and doing stupid stuff that got me into a lot of trouble with the law.

I’ve seen many of my friends pass because of the lifestyle we chose back then.

Fast forward to going to school. I never studied my entire life and here I was in community college. It was extremely difficult at first to try to study. I didn’t know how. When I got to UCLA it was even harder, and law school was on a whole different level.

Add that with having to work and support myself.

We’d love to hear more about your work and what you are currently focused on. What else should we know?
I’m a criminal defense practice. I represent those people who have been accused of committing a crime. Everything from assault, battery, DUI’s, fraud, murder, etc., you get the point.

I only do criminal defense. Never touched anything else. Before law school, I worked for a criminal defense firm, while in law school I externed at the public defenders office and juvenile defenders office. I’m also a certified gang expert. One of the very few attorney in the state who can testify on gangs.

I’m proud that I take the time to get to know my clients and to hear them out. A lot of attorney get jaded over time and lose patience with their clients. I’ve been on the other side. I know what it is like when you are scared to death and have no idea what is going on because your attorney won’t talk to you or explain things to you. Because of my past, I take pride in talking to my clients and helping them understand the posture of their case.

This makes me different than many attorneys. If you go online and read my reviews, most of my clients talk about how I took the time to explain things to them and to walk them through as to what was going to happen. I’m proud of that.

I take my client’s calls personally. I think it is important when someone is facing criminal allegations that they can talk to their attorney directly and not some secretary who knows nothing about your case. I take pride in that.

Let’s touch on your thoughts about our city – what do you like the most and least?
I grew up in LA. LA is my home. I love the diversity, the food, ah…yes the food. There is no other place in the world where you can go snowboarding, surfing, and atv riding in the same day. Some of the ethnic food we have are actually better than their origin, i.e., Mexican food.

What do I like the least? The traffic sucks here! Because I go to court all over California, I’m stuck in traffic all the time. It’s horrible.

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