Our team is growing!

This month, we welcomed Emiliza San Diego as Senior Associate. In 2010, Emiliza earned her BA from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and then her Juris Doctor from California Western School of Law in 2015. While in law school, she held an internship with the Family Justice Center in San Diego, which inspired her to dedicate her professional legal focus to family law. Emiliza has a knack for straightforwardly explaining complex legal concepts and finds guiding people through difficult times rewarding. Her peers and clients have continuously recognized her for her excellence in family law. Emiliza earned the Avvo Client’s Choice Award for divorce/family law in 2021 and was recognized as a San Diego Superior Lawyers Rising Star/Super Lawyers Rising Star in San Diego earlier this year.

Emiliza will continue to advise family law clients in the San Diego area and will simultaneously practice and appear in Santa Clara County. Emiliza is a member of The San Diego County Bar Association, the San Diego Family Law Bar Association, and Filipino American Lawyers in San Diego.

Please welcome Emiliza to our diverse team of 23

family law attorneys!

We are delighted to announce the promotion of Sarah C. Stull to Senior Associate. Sarah began her journey at HK in January 2018 as a law clerk while attending Santa Clara University School of Law. In the five years, Sarah has been with the firm, she has twice been promoted, from Law Clerk to Associate and then from Associate to Senior Associate. Her clients and colleagues have praised Sarah’s in-depth grasp of the complexities of family law, strong oral and written advocacy, and overall professionalism.

We are also thrilled to announce the promotion of Kelsey J. Hickman from Associate Attorney to Senior Associate. Kelsey has dedicated the last five years of her career to family law at Hoover Krepelka, LLP. She started with the firm as a Law Clerk in January 2018. After passing the California state bar, Kelsey advanced to Associate. Kelsey has steadfastly accelerated her stature and experience as a family law attorney. Her tenacious attention to detail, ability to manage even the most complex cases, and innate sense of the global divorce process have allowed her to provide strategic and practical counsel to her clients.

Please join us in congratulating Ernest A. Baello on achieving the distinguished Certified Family Law Specialist designation! Attorneys with a CFLS designation are credentialed beyond the standard legal requirements to practice family law.

Out of approximately 200,000 California attorneys, less than 1% are CFLSs.

The process of earning the CFLS certification is daunting. Qualifying factors include:

A Certified Family Law Specialist is not a pay-to-play "award" nor an accolade offered by a legal marketing company. Instead, the California State Bar Board of Legal Specialization oversees this program, which was created to encourage attorney competency.

We are delighted to announce that Ernest is now a part of this elite group of practitioners.

Congratulations Ernest!

Christine A. Pham discusses “Divorce in the Public Eye” with Ilyssa Panitz on The Divorce Hour Podcast, available via iTunes, Google Podcasts, Audible, and Spotify.

We have been working diligently to provide relevant and valuable content on our website. This year, you'll notice new articles and blogs at least three times a month as we tackle the most frequently asked questions by our clients. One of our favorites from this month is, "What happens when someone loses their job during or after a divorce?" James J. Hoover, Partner, and Certified Family Law Specialist, discusses unemployment's implications on spousal support, child support, and more.

Click below to read the full article.

As President of the Santa Clara County Trial Lawyers Association, HK's Senior Associate, Andrea J. Justo, emceed this year's Spring Fling on April 13th. This year, the SCCTLA presented the Lifetime Achievement Award to the honorable Maryanne Z. Murphy. Congratulations to Judge Murphy and retiring attorneys James P. Collins and Alfredo M. Morales, who were also honorees at this year's event. 

Hoover Krepelka, LLP is delighted to feature Open Doors to Future Possibilities in this month's Community Spotlight.

Open Doors to Future Possibilities' mission is to help marginalized and vulnerable individuals to achieve more stability and lead fulfilling lives. Founded in 2019, Open Doors offers low-cost Counseling Programs, Veterans Programs, and Homeless Outreach programs, which help strengthen the hope and resilience of our community members in San Jose.

We encourage you to join us at the Open Doors Gala on May 6th, which will be held at The Triton Museum in San Jose. Corporate sponsorships and silent auction items are in need. For more information on how you can support, please contact Ellen Fosse, Managing Director at Open Doors to Future Possibilities, at: ellen.f@opendoorstofuturepossibilities.org.

We hope to see you at the Gala on May 6th!

To learn more about Open Doors to the Future, click below.

If you’re still reading, thanks for staying with us because we saved something special for last!

Click here for our new video documenting a client’s journey at Hoover Krepelka.

Thank you to Barrett Rodda and the extraordinary team at Rising Tide Studios for thoughtfully capturing this

emotionally powerful story.

We are grateful to our clients who spoke with Rising Tide Studios to help identify the common themes that helped shape this storyline.

We also extend our most sincere thanks to the hundreds of HK clients who have left positive feedback via online reviews over the years. Those experiences, supplemented by the character references our employees provided in their interviews with Rising Tide Studios, were combined to capture the overall essence of HK. Of course, we could not have done this without the testimonial and participation from

our former client, Sudie Hsu – thank you, Sudie!

monthly newsletters here.