Lum Law Group spans two generations of attorneys in the United States. Its primary partners are father and son, Albert C. Lum and Albert Justin Lum (“Justin”), who, between them, have over 70 years of experience in the practice of law. The firm is located in Pasadena, California and Las Vegas, Nevada, and primarily focuses on Immigration, Intellectual Property, and business entity formation and representation. They are third and fourth generation Chinese Americans.
Albert Lum is a third generation Chinese American. In 1910, Charlie Lum immigrated to Mississippi from Xinhui, in Guangdong Province, China. It was there that he met Bertha Lum, who was born in Mississippi. They late moved to West Memphis, Arkansas and it was there that they raised a family of 4 boys and 2 girls. Albert C. Lum was the youngest child in the family. He was born on January 21, 1934. Albert Lum was one of the few Chinese Americans growing up in the southern United States. He and his siblings were the only Chinese Americans at their schools. During those years, Chinese-Americans would get together from surrounding states for parties and gatherings. Most were Cantonese, as was Albert. It happened more than once that Albert Lum had to travel over a few state lines to meet with other Chinese-Americans as a child.
In 1954, he joined the Army, where he served for years. He later attended Tulane University, a prestigious university located in New Orleans, Louisiana. After graduating from Tulane in 1958 with a Bachelor’s Degree in Accounting, he decided to go west to Los Angeles, California, where his eldest sister, Frances, was working for the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) as a tax auditor. Albert joined his sister at the IRS, also working as a tax auditor. At the same time, he began studying law, attending the University of Southern California (USC). In 1965, he obtained his J.D. and he passed the California State Bar in 1963, first becoming a California Attorney.
After one year of working for a small firm, Albert Lum started his own practice. He began his practice in Chinatown, near downtown Los Angeles (the main hub for Chinese-Americans in the 1960s). From the very beginning of his practice, he worked to help small Chinese business owners maneuver through the intricacies of the American legal system. At one point, he represented the majority of the Chinese restaurants in Chinatown. He acted as a business attorney for his clients with his education and tax training. Additionally, he did real estate law for his clients, based upon his experience at the IRS and his real estate broker’s license. Based on his clients’ needs, he also branched out into the area of immigration. Business immigration later extended to family immigration, which led to those families starting their own businesses. They brought over relatives and Albert Lum helped them, too. During his years of practice, he has also been involved in the Chinese-American community as a whole.
He was the president of the Los Angeles Chinese Chamber of Commerce. He was Chairman of the Chinatown Advisory Committee to the Community Redevelopment Agency (CRA). In 1975, he was part of the founding group of the Southern California Chinese Lawyer’s Association (SCCLA), the first Asian-American lawyer’s law association in the United States. The association was founded after he and other attorneys had a meeting where the late Judge Delbert H. Wong, the first Asian-American judge in the United States, and a close friend of Albert Lum, suggested that it would be a good idea to have such an organization. Albert Lum was the first president of SCCLA in 1976.
In the realm of government, he campaigned for Governor Jerry Brown during his first term as governor. He supported Senator Feinstein in her unsuccessful campaign for governor, and then later, in her successful campaign for the U.S. Senate. He was a strong supporter of Michael Dukakis in his unsuccessful campaign to become the President of the United States in 1988, and was chairman of the support group of Chinese.
