Wellness Starts From the Inside Out: Building a Sustainable Family Law Practice

Hon. Wendy L. Wilcox (Ret.) joined Signature Resolution following 23 years of private practice and nearly six years on the bench at the Los Angeles Superior Court. A former trial lawyer, firm founder, and judge, Judge Wilcox brings a rare combination of courtroom experience, judicial perspective, and business acumen to every case she mediates.

During her tenure on the Los Angeles Superior Court, Judge Wilcox served as a Family Law judge at Stanley Mosk Courthouse and presided over an unlimited civil jurisdiction IC court in both Compton and Van Nuys. Judge Wilcox regularly conducted Mandatory Settlement Conferences on her own cases and for fellow judges in Van Nuys. Most recently, Judge Wilcox resolved three of the largest catastrophic injury cases in the Van Nuys courthouse.

Before joining the bench, Judge Wilcox built one of the most distinguished civil litigation practices in California and Nevada. In her seventh year of practice, Judge Wilcox founded her own firm, growing it from a single Los Angeles office to four offices across Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco, and Las Vegas — and for ten of those years, to 35 lawyers — becoming the largest women-owned litigation firm in California and Nevada.

Her practice spanned catastrophic injury, wrongful death, toxic tort, mass tort, products liability, premises liability, class actions, professional liability, construction defect, insurance coverage and bad faith, and employment — with her public entity practice encompassing catastrophic injury, wrongful death, sex abuse, class actions, excessive force, and employment.

Throughout her career, Judge Wilcox settled numerous multi-million dollar cases, particularly in catastrophic injury, wrongful death, and public entity matters. Judge Wilcox also tried many lengthy and complex jury trials — in products liability, catastrophic injury, professional liability, insurance coverage and bad faith, and public entity — compiling an undefeated trial record.

Among her notable representations, Judge Wilcox served as lead counsel for the security and crowd control company in the Route 91 Harvest Festival litigation, lead counsel in a four-month jury trial for three subcontractors in one of the largest construction defect cases in California, and lead counsel arguing before the Delaware Supreme Court on an insurance coverage dispute addressing reimbursement of defense costs and indemnity claims, when excess coverage is triggered in underlying antitrust litigation. Judge Wilcox was also part of a California Court of Appeal decision on expert testimony that continues to impact trials today.

Rebecca Chavez is a Staff Attorney at the National Immigration Project, bringing extensive experience in immigration law from across Texas’s legal landscape. Before joining the organization in 2026, she spent over four years at the Galveston-Houston Immigrant Representation Project, advancing from Staff Attorney to Senior Staff Attorney, where she represented detained immigrant clients in removal proceedings and litigated before federal district and appellate courts, including the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals and the Board of Immigration Appeals. Earlier in her career, she practiced at Suárez Candler Law, PLLC, handling a broad range of immigration matters including asylum, VAWA self-petitions, U visas, and DACA applications.

Michelle N. Méndez serves as the National Immigration Project’s Director of Legal Resources and Training where she oversees the training, legal resources, and technical assistance curriculums, supervises the Motions to Reopen Project, and engages in litigation. Michelle also serves as the Program Director for the National Institute for Trial Advocacy’s (NITA) Immigration Public Programs and, in 2019, NITA awarded her with the “Robert E. Oliphant Award for Outstanding Service.” Prior to this role she served as the Director of the Defending Vulnerable Populations Program at the Catholic Legal Immigration Network, Inc. (CLINIC) where she provided training and technical support to immigration practitioners nationwide, edited the American Immigration Lawyers Association’s “Representing Clients in Immigration Court” publication, engaged in federal litigation, supervised remote response projects, and, from 2015 to 2017, oversaw CLINIC’s role in the CARA Pro Bono Project in Dilley, Texas (now the Dilley Pro Bono Project).

Prior to CLINIC, Michelle served as senior managing attorney at Catholic Charities D.C., where she began as an Equal Justice Works Fellow sponsored by DLA Piper. Michelle has taught the Immigration Litigation Clinic at Catholic University Columbus School of Law, was a Visiting Clinical Lecturer in Law at Yale Law School, and assisted the Immigrant Rights Clinic at the University of Baltimore School of Law. Michelle has been counsel on a variety of federal litigation matters before federal district courts and circuit courts, including Duncan v. Barr, 919 F.3d 209 (4th Cir. 2019).

Michelle holds a JD from the University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law, a BA from the University of Richmond, a Certificate in Nonprofit Management from Georgetown University, and a Professional Certificate in Peace and Conflict Resolution through the Rotary Peace Center at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok, Thailand. She is a native Spanish speaker originally from Medellin, Colombia who is also fluent in French. Michelle is a proud resident of Baltimore, Maryland.

Christopher Kao is a Partner at Pillsbury Law, where he leads the firm’s Intellectual Property Litigation practice group and co-leads its Taiwan practice. A seasoned first-chair trial lawyer, he represents technology, semiconductor, telecommunications, and biotechnology companies in high-stakes patent, copyright, trademark, and trade secrets disputes before federal and state courts, the U.S. International Trade Commission, and the Federal Circuit, and has secured favorable rulings including Federal Circuit-affirmed judgments invalidating asserted patents. He has been recognized by IAM Patent 1000, The Daily Journal as one of California’s Top IP lawyers, and Best Lawyers for his work in IP and patent litigation.

Judge Robert Rassp practiced workers’ compensation and Social Security disability law for decades before being appointed as a workers’ compensation administrative law judge in 2018, and he has served as Presiding Judge of the WCAB Los Angeles District Office since December 2019. A leading authority in the field, he is the author of The Lawyer’s Guide to the AMA Guides and California Workers’ Compensation and editor-in-chief of Rassp & Herlick, California Workers’ Compensation Law, among other treatises and publications. He is currently an adjunct professor at Pepperdine Caruso School of Law and Chairmain of the Board of DIrectors of Friends Research Institute.

Sergio A. Perez is the Managing Attorney of Franco Law Group, APLC’s San Diego office, where he focuses on immigration and employment law and handles cases across San Diego and Los Angeles. A UCLA School of Law graduate, he co-founded the National Latina/o Law Students Association and served as Managing Editor of the Chicano-Latino Law Review, and has since published widely in the Daily Journal on immigration policy and civil procedure. He is active in the community as a board member of Latinos y Latinas En Acción and a frequent volunteer at naturalization workshops, and is licensed to practice before all U.S. Immigration Courts, the Board of Immigration Appeals, and the federal district courts in California.

Dylan J. Price is a Partner at Sheppard in the firm’s Century City office, practicing in the Business Trial and Entertainment, Media and Technology Practice Groups. He represents studios, producers, and media companies on entertainment litigation matters including motion picture distribution, content licensing, and IFTA arbitrations while also handling copyright, trademark, and right of publicity disputes, along with DMCA and fair use counseling. Dylan additionally represents corporate clients in business, tort, insurance, and consumer class action litigation, including cases involving California’s consumer privacy statutes.

Eileen A. Scallen is Professor of Practice at UCLA School of Law, where she previously served as Associate Dean for Curriculum and Academic Affairs and later as Director of Part-time Faculty, earning the 2023 Rutter Award for Excellence in Law Teaching. A magna cum laude graduate of the University of Minnesota Law School and former Editor-in-Chief of the Minnesota Law Review, she clerked for Judge A. Wallace Tashima before practicing at Latham & Watkins and teaching at UC Law San Francisco and Mitchell Hamline College of Law. She is the primary author of the California Evidence Courtroom Manual and Working Together in Law, with research focused on evidentiary privileges and theories of influence in team settings.