Southern California's
Best Lawyers 2026

Candice Klein is a founding partner of Chang | Klein LLP. She has over 20 years of experience fighting and championing causes for plaintiffs, specializing in wrongful death, catastrophic personal injury, sexual assault and childhood sexual abuse cases. Candice works on every case with an unshakable devotion to help those who have suffered permanent and serious physical or emotional injuries. She understands that these injuries not only affect the victims, but their family members as well. She...

Bio Deborah Chang, one of the founding members of Athea Trial Lawyers, has won record-breaking verdicts and settlements in catastrophic injury and wrongful death cases across the country. As if this wasn’t enough, she’s also a partner at Los Angeles firm Chang | Klein LLP. As a trusted advocate at two powerhouse firms, Deborah has made a name for herself as an attorney capable of fighting complex and high-profile cases. At Athea Trial Lawyers, Deborah has been involved in some of ...

Ed Chapin is the Managing Partner in the San Diego office of Sanford Heisler Sharp, LLP, a national law firm with offices in the District of Columbia, New York, California, Tennessee, and Maryland. Ed received his J.D. from the University of Missouri School of Law and his B.S. from Southwest Missouri State University. Ed is a veteran litigator whose practice spans class actions, unfair business practices, professional negligence, insurance coverage, bad faith, toxic torts, serious personal in...

Brian W. Easton is the Co-Managing Partner at Easton & Easton, LLP, where he oversees the firm's litigation department. Brian has practiced law since 1995 and has spent the entire 29+ years of his career as an attorney working to help injured people. Brian received his B.A. degree Magna Cum Laude from Brigham Young University and his Juris Doctor Cum Laude from Brigham Young University in 1995. He has taught continuing education classes for the OC Bar Association and has mentored many you...

Gabriel Mendoza is a Partner at Easton & Easton, LLP, who has been serving as a Personal Injury Attorney for Easton & Easton since 2016. Gabriel's passion to seek justice for personal injury victims drew him to Easton & Easton. Prior to law school, Gabriel was a paralegal for a personal injury law firm, where he experienced firsthand the inequities of a system that desired to take advantage of victims who had been harmed by the negligence of others, which sought to pay these victi...

Matt Easton is the Co-Managing Partner at Easton & Easton, LLP, primarily responsible for shepherding the business aspects of the firm's meteoric growth since 2019. Matt has practiced law since 2009 and spends most of his time focusing on the litigation of high-value and more difficult cases. Matt received his B.A. in 2006 from Brigham Young University, where he majored in English and minored in Philosophy and Editing. Whittier Law School awarded Matt a full academic scholarship , which p...

Travis Easton is a Co-Managing Partner at Easton & Easton, LLP, and has been the lead figure in some of the firm's most prominent cases in recent years. Travis joined the firm in 2014 and has acquired more than $150 million for his clients over his career. Travis received his B.A. in 2011 from Brigham Young University, where he majored in English. He went on to attend the University of San Diego School of Law (continually ranked one of the top 10 law schools in California) where he receiv...

Doug Easton is the Founding Partner of Easton & Easton, LLP, and has practiced law since 1971 — more than 55 years of experience. After 20 years of practicing with various large litigation firms, he founded the Law Offices of W. Douglas Easton in 1991 as a solo practitioner. In the years that followed, Doug's sons Brian, Matt, and Travis joined him in the practice and the firm changed it’s name to Easton & Easton, LLP and helped build the firm into a powerful force to help...