Jiahui (Rose) Wang

I attribute my success to three main things: hard work, passion, and being true to myself. Hard work is the most important thing - I work really hard, sometimes 7 days a week, 12 or 14 hours every day. But I also think what I'm doing is very meaningful. I'm trying to help the minority stockholders who cannot exercise their rights on their own, and I think passion is definitely very important. Being true to myself has been crucial too. If I was trying to pretend to be someone else at the beginning, I wouldn't have gotten this far. So it's very important to be true to myself. Even though in litigation practice my boss expects me to do everything like trial or legal writing or whatever, on the other hand, I can focus on what I'm really great at and interested in. For example, I do a lot of case development right now, watching the market every day to figure out which transactions are problematic so we can dig into this more, file a complaint, draft a complaint, and then go from there.

The best career advice I received came from a former clerk at the bankruptcy court when I was hesitating about going into litigation because English is not my native language and litigation is male-dominated. She encouraged me to try the litigation path as my career and told me that I don't have to be as aggressive as men, that I can develop my own style. She said I can be gentle and assertive as a woman practicing in the litigation field. She emphasized that it's more important that I have analytical skills and writing skills - those are more important than trying to be aggressive. She basically told me I can develop my own skill, and that's what I'm trying to do right now. Those advices really meant a lot to me.

The advice I would give to young women entering the legal industry is to utilize their strengths and don't try to fit yourself into a stereotype. People are different. One thing that works for others doesn't mean that will work for you. Just try to utilize your strength and try to figure out who you are, and just do it step by step, and you will make it there. I'm not the person who plans ahead of time like 10 years earlier - I'm not that kind of person. I just take it step by step, and that's exactly what I do.

The biggest challenge in my field right now is work-life balance, which is very terrible. I just got married and my husband and I are considering having a baby in the following years, so that's one thing I'm really concerned about - I don't know how that's going to change my career, but we can figure it out. As for opportunities, I think the top thing is AI. That brings both challenges and opportunities. I agree with someone who said that this world right now is full of intelligence but lacks judgment. That really makes sense. Just try to use your judgments - that's the one thing that cannot be replaced by AI. What AI can do is facilitate productivity and intelligence, but not judgment.

The most important value to me is feeling like I'm doing the right thing. For litigation, there's the plaintiff side and there's the defense side. I can't imagine myself going into the defense side firms - I just felt like it goes against my intuition. On the plaintiff's side, I feel like I'm doing the right thing, I'm trying to help people, and I don't have to be very aggressive just because I have to be aggressive. When we settle a case, sometimes it's like a billion dollar settlement or several hundred million dollars settlement, and that money goes directly to the minority stockholders. Sometimes they don't even realize there's a settlement, but they get the money, and I feel like I'm doing the right thing. That sense of integrity and helping people aligns with my values.