When should you seek agreement, and when is court necessary?

I finished my electrical engineering and computer science degree at Berkeley in two and a half years, at 19. In 2002 I interned at JPL on the Mars Exploration Rover's main control unit, then spent four years at Raytheon on the B-2 radar program. While still at Raytheon, I started law school at the University of La Verne. My legal career began in intellectual property at Howrey; family law came later.

Engineering taught me to break complicated problems into smaller parts, identify assumptions and find where something can fail. I do the same with a divorce, contract dispute or IP issue: understand the system before deciding where to intervene. I was a shy engineer, but today much of my work involves talking with clients, in court and on my podcast.

My marriage lasted a year and a half. My divorce lasted four years, and I went through five lawyers. I was already an IP lawyer, but I did not always understand why my own case was moving in a particular direction. I learned what it feels like to be scared, frustrated, spending money and waiting for someone to explain what comes next.

A client is thinking about their children, house, finances and future. It changed how I run a first meeting. I try not to begin with ‘What can we file?’ I want to know what the person wants life to look like when the case is over. What someone asks for on day one is not always what they actually want.

After four years in court, my own case ended in a settlement. I remember asking why it had taken four years if we were going to settle anyway. If there is a healthy and realistic chance of saving the marriage, explore it first. If the marriage is over, try mediation. Court is a last resort when other options are not workable or not safe.

Once people file motions, take rigid positions and spend money fighting, compromise can become harder because they want to justify what they have invested. Sometimes slowing the process down matters more than escalating it. With children involved, helping two people end a marriage without destroying their ability to parent together can be an important result.

A divorce can involve a business, which may own trademarks or other IP. We represented one spouse in a divorce where the couple were also business partners. When the marriage ended, the company did not. Every divorce decision was also a business decision.

Questions included the company's value, who ran it during the divorce, what the ownership records and agreements said, whether one spouse would buy the other out, and who would keep the name and brand. Different attorneys need to coordinate; clients' problems do not arrive in neat practice-area boxes.

One mistake is cleaning things up too early: translating a contract, copying selected messages into another document, deleting apparently irrelevant messages or sending only screenshots. You can lose context. If the signed agreement is Chinese, preserve that version. If there are two languages, check whether the contract identifies a controlling version.

Keep the original documents and back up complete message histories. Who said what and when, the surrounding conversation, attachments and voice messages may all matter. A new phone, reinstalled app or deleted thread may mean losing records. Preserve first, organize second; it is harder to recreate evidence after it disappears.

A client may assume most property belongs to the spouse who earned most of the money. California generally treats marital earnings as community property and generally divides community property equally. In custody, the court focuses on the parents and the child's best interests; grandparents can seek visitation only in limited situations.

Business clients may rely on relationships, conversations or very short agreements. Many oral agreements can be enforced, but proof and filing deadlines differ from written contracts. Speaking Mandarin helps, but understanding the context matters too. My role is to explain the law without dismissing the expectations behind a client's decisions.

I have written six books, including The Big Secret, co-authored with Jack Canfield in 2017, and Stress-Free Divorce in 2018. I host Love and Law. A recurring question is: ‘How do I know when to keep trying and when to let go?’ People ask about marriages, business partnerships, lawsuits and family relationships.

There is no universal answer. Separate the problem from the emotion: what outcome do you want, what can you control, and what is the conflict costing financially and emotionally? Consider where a decision leaves you one, five or ten years from now. Winning and being happy are not the same thing. The law can tell you what you can do, but not always what you should do.