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...

Gabriel Mendoza is an associate attorney at Easton & Easton, LLP, and focusses his practice on representing injured persons. 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 first-hand 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 victims as lit...

Matt Easton has been a central figure in some of Easton & Easton’s most prominent cases in recent years, including a 2019 mediated settlement for $20,000,000, a 2016 settlement for $3,060,000, a 2013 settlement for $2,750,000, and two 2017 settlements for $1,875,000 and $1,800,000 — all of which were selected as Top Million-Dollar Settlements in California for their respective years, and which contributed to Matt’s lifetime selection to the Multi-Million Dollar Advocates...

SEQ CHAPTER \h \r 1 Doug Easton, the founder of the Law Offices of W. Douglas Easton, has practiced law since 1971. Over his career, Doug has represented thousands of people in personal injury claims who have sustained all manner of injuries in all types of accidents through the negligence or wrongdoing by other individuals, businesses, or governmental entities. Doug has served as an Orange County Superior Court Temporary Judge and as an arbitrator and settlement judge for the Orange County S...