Life Advice From Anh Phoong: The Bay Area’s Most Famous Billboard Lawyer
Photo of Anh Phoong by Vita Hewitt
Photos: Vita Hewitt
Location: Chateau Tivoli
Makeup: Kat Sarabia
Something wrong? Call Anh Phoong. No, really. She has the answers.
Seeing Anh Phoong in real life is a fever dream. She walks up the turquoise steps to Chateau Tivoli with her assistant trailing behind, clad in a smart plaid miniskirt and black boots. She’s even more intimidating in real life until she smiles, her braces gleaming, and begins to chatter. Instantly the photoshoot team feels at ease.
Seeing San Francisco’s most impressive and iconic personal injury lawyer on a billboard is good luck. Two billboards in a row is said to be auspicious. Phoong’s fame brought a huge crowd to the Stud earlier this year and continues to make her a legend online. Her tagline has made her famous, but her life story and solid advice make her worth listening to.
This interview has been edited for clarity.
New Anh Phoong just dropped pic.twitter.com/BwuL9HEsxa
— Annie Gaus (@AnnieGaus) July 26, 2023
On Braces
Bunny McFadden: Do you have any advice for someone who needs braces?
Anh Phoong: Get them as soon as you can! I’ve always wanted and needed them. It was more of an economic thing… My parents couldn’t afford it. This last year I was like, You know what? Eff that. I’ve always wanted to fix this issue I’ve had and I’m gonna do it. Better do it now than when I’m 70. I’m trying to embrace it.
BM: No pun intended.
Photo by Vita Hewitt
On Getting Dressed
BM: How do you decide what to wear for your photo shoots for the billboards? And for court?
AP: I honestly go with what I feel like, on that day and during that season or period of my life. Pre-babies (I have three kids) it was a little easier, but now that I have kids I’m like, Dressing up for work? Pssh. Do I have to? I have a two year old and I’m still kind of getting my groove back, so it just depends on my mood and what I have to do.
On Being a Leader
BM: I imagine it’s hard to run a 62-person staff. How do you motivate them? And what keeps you going?
AP: You know, one of the biggest things that I’m really proud of is that they work hard and we work hard as a team, so we do a lot of fun stuff. This is gonna sound bad, but almost every month we have some type of party… We’ll do team building type of things. We’ll play games. We just had a field day for 4th of July. It shows them that they can enjoy their work, enjoy their coworkers, enjoy me in that not-the-boss type of role. We just try to make it fun. As far as motivating them, they know that in their heart of hearts of what we do, we help people. And they feel good, we all feel good when we are able to help people. That’s the core of it.
On Having Haters and Being Misunderstood
BM: You’re a personal injury lawyer. Some call these ambulance chasers. It has a reputation for being questionable or sleazy. You seem like you have a moral compass.
AP: Thank you so much. I’m glad that you can see that. It used to get to me, but I’ve always known the core of who I am, what I do, and the firm that I’ve built. And I’ve learned that there are people who are like that, and I can’t blame the public for putting me in that genre because that’s all they see. When they get to know me, they know that’s not us. It’s part of knowing who we are, what we do, what we offer to our clients.
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On Having Competition
BM: You mentioned billboard lawyers. Have you met any of them?
AP: I know a lot of them. I’m all for it. When you are competing against each other fairly, absolutely. All game. There’s enough business for everybody. I have no hate on anybody. But if you do something that’s not morally right like stealing my name or faking to be me to get a client, anything like that is not cool. If you’ve got your own brand, your own name, go do what you gotta do. No hate at all. Wish you the best.
[Makeup Artist Kat]: “That’s why you’re number one!”
Photo by Vita Hewitt
On Fertility and Becoming a Mom
BM: I’m also a mom and I had issues with having kids. Fertility. If you’re comfortable with answering it, you’ve struggled with infertility and now have some beautiful children. Tell us how that journey affected your career.
AP: As a woman, I put my career and school first and I thought, Ok, let’s have kids now. I’m ready and I want them. And when it didn’t happen naturally, I questioned everything. Am I not supposed to be a mom? For the longest time, I thought that I was not deserving or this was my punishment for not wanting kids right now. Like when I was in law school, I said I don’t want to get pregnant right now. Please, not right now. I felt guilty for thinking that. It’s such a sensitive subject, and I’m definitely open to talking about it. Anytime anyone mentions it, I’m like, Call me. Call me! Because even going through the process itself is so difficult. I’m a big advocate for fertility treatment.
The author, Bunny McFadden, and Anh Phoong at Chateau Tivoli. Photo by Vita Hewitt
On Internet Trolls, Sexism, and Racism
BM: Your social media game is on point but occasionally comments come out that they’d never say to an older white male lawyer. How have racism & sexism shown up in your career, and what would you say to others dealing with that kind of noxious behavior?
AP: That was one of the biggest things that I faced when I decided to start advertising. It wasn’t, “Look at me. I’m a beautiful, voluptuous girl. You should hire me as your attorney.” So when I see comments like that, it’s like, NO, motherfucker. Sorry. I have a law degree. I’m a LAWYER. I’m offering legal services to people who think there’s no other type of representation out there for being female, being a minority, being ethnic.
It was absolutely terrifying. Do they want a lawyer that looks like me? Are they going to think I’m not able to do as well as that type of representation that we’re used to seeing? I had to overcome all these insecurities. Most of the response was, “We’ve been waiting for you! We’ve been waiting for this to happen in our community!” I’m not just a pretty face or a girl on a billboard. I’m actually a pretty damn good attorney.
On Getting into a “Good School”
BM: You talk about not going to a top tier and facing rejection. Do you have advice for someone who has gotten rejected from their dream school?
AP: It doesn’t matter!! If you get licensed, you’re licensed. You’re an attorney. There are jobs that only want people that went to the top tier prestigious schools so if that’s your goal and you want to be in that type of firm or that type of job, there’s no way around it. But if you just want to be a lawyer and have a good job and help people, it doesn’t matter where you go to school. If an employer doesn’t see you as a person outside of where you went to school [but you passed the hardest bar in the country]… Maybe that’s not the right firm.
I would never let it deter you. If anything, rejection’s my middle name. The lowest school didn’t even want me and said no to me. That was supposed to be the end of my journey. I know rejection. The reason I started the law firm was that I couldn’t get anyone to hire me.
Photo by Vita Hewitt
On Mom Guilt
AP: I feel guilty all the time. I feel like I may not be a good enough mom. I’m not there for them enough. Am I putting my career above them? A lot of moms feel this. Working moms, moms that stay at home. Am I doing enough? At the end of the day, you’re doing your best. You know, your intuition as a mom, when they need your attention and you know what you can get away with. Don’t feel so bad if you can’t be there for every soccer game. It’s unrealistic in this modern age. And I don’t think that we should be held to that standard where it’s only the mom’s guilt. The fathers can now take kids to soccer games and be more a part of that. Mom guilt’s a real thing. There’s some days that it hits me heavier than others, but we just do our best. Do your best that you can. Love your kids. Hug them. I think that’s enough.
On Breakups
BM: What advice do you have for people getting over a breakup or getting over their first love?
AP: Just know that everybody comes and goes into your life for a reason. And so enjoy the moments that you have, the memories that you’ve made. If they’re not in your life, there’s a reason for it. There’s a plan that you don’t know. If we’re meant to be, there’s nothing that will divide us. One day at a time.
Photo by Vita Hewitt
On Marriage
AP: I was told before I got married that marriage is going to be the hardest thing that you do in your life. I didn’t understand it because I wasn’t married then, and now I do. In a marriage, it is so much of a sacrifice and compromise, and you are no longer selfish and thinking about just Anh Phoong. You’ve got to think about every action and move that you make and how it’s gonna affect your partner. So when you live the life of being single and you’re not used to that, compromising seems like you’re giving up so much. Just be prepared that in a marriage, there’s gonna be up and down days. I’d love to sit here and tell you that I have a freaking amazing, perfect marriage. I can’t say that. I can tell you that I have a husband that I love. We fight for each other every day. We work for our marriage.
BM: If you had said any other answer, I wouldn’t have believed you.
AP: You would have been like, “She’s fake, bitch.” There’s great things about marriage. I have my best friend, my companion. Anything that goes wrong… When something goes wrong, Anh calls her husband ok? He’s the first person that I vent to, and anything good that happens, he’s the first person I want to talk to.
On Living in The Bay
AP: It’s a hustle. Things are changing so much. But the upsides of being in The Bay make up for a lot of the challenges that we have here. We’ve got good weather, good food, good people, good entertainment, good vibes all over. That overshadows some of the issues with living in The Bay, absolutely.
You can find out more about Anh Phoong and her law firm right here.
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